Another Opening Another Show
by ILoVeWicked
Summary: SEQUEL TO THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS! Chief is at it again: the yearly musical/group activity that the doctors of SGH are forced to participate in. And this time, it's going to be "So Much Better" than before. Rated T for safety. R&R please!
1. Omigod, You Guys!

**Another Opening Another Show**

**Disclaimer: I'm just going to do this once and save myself the ten seconds of my life every time I write a new chapter…I do not own Grey's Anatomy or the musical Legally Blonde or any Broadway/pop culture reference made throughout this story.**

**A/N #1: So this takes place between season 5 and 6, but since I live in a world of denial, George lives on, Izzie is cancer free, Noah the cardiologist never exsisted, and the Chief is just insane, not an alcoholic.  
Also, as far as pairings go for all you shippers, couples in the story include: Maddison, MerDer, Huntina, Calzona, Alex/Izzie, George/Lexie, and some surprises.  
One final note: I probably picked a horrible time to start this, and I mean horrible. My school show just started this week and rehearsals are going to be CRAZY for the next three months. That on top of school and I'll most likely have no time to update as quickly as I would like to. But please, please, please, I'm begging you, don't lose faith in me or the story. As you can see, I'm already emotionally attached and I would love for my baby to get some reviews and supporters! Thanks! ****Now, read on, friends.**

* * *

**Chapter 1- Omigod You Guys!**

"The little white cards, Conference Room A, and holiday break…I don't feel so good about this."

Meredith Grey sighed an uneasy, shallow breath as she and her best friend, Cristina Yang, leaned against a table in the very conference room they were called to exactly one year ago on that particular date. They were alone, cold, and not quite sure what to anticipate…that is, until Meredith put all of the puzzle pieces together. Meredith cussed rather loudly and buried her head in her hands.

At first, Cristina could not understand Meredith's sudden outburst. Sure, Cristina mused with a shrug, her best friend's constant whining was expected, but this thought had just come out of the blue and had genuinely upset Meredith. Then, Cristina literally saw the light, the spotlight used from the previous year's spectacle, and she was horrified.

Doing the same as her friend, Cristina's eyes grew wide and her mouth flew open in horror. "Aw, no!"

"Oh, y—yes," Izzie Stevens shivered. "I bet you a million to one that we're doing another stupid group activity." Meredith's nose crinkled in disgust as she thought of last year's activity: putting on the musical _Wicked_ and almost going to jail for it. The _last _thing she wanted was to participate in one of the Chief's "Team Building" experiments.

Just as Izzie mentioned "group activity", Derek Shepherd, Meredith's fiancé, and Owen Hunt, Cristina's boyfriend, emerged into the conference room, white cards at hand. Derek was a usually chirpy, pleasant man this early in the morning (his morning person physique factored quite largely into his McDreamy demeanor) but Derek's mood was quickly dampened when he caught onto what was happening. The second he stepped foot into Conference Room A and spotted Izzie shivering and his girlfriend nearly in tears, Derek's face grew as white as the index card he was holding.

"Not again!" he whispered. Owen's brow knit together in confusion.

"What?" the trauma surgeon asked, poking Derek's shoulder until the head of neurology showed some sign that his brain was still functioning and telling him to inhale and exhale on cue. Derek sighed heavily and turned to face his friend, who was awaiting an explanation on why everyone was so worked up.

"The Chief is at it again," Derek summed this devious scheme of his boss up for Owen in six simple words, to save himself the time and the hassle. Derek figured Owen, the strategic trauma surgeon he was, would be smart enough to figure it out for himself. Owen crossed his arms over his chest.

"I don't get it. The Chief is at _what_ again?" Owen asked in frustration. The others rolled their eyes at the newbie's naïve self. Cristina left Meredith's side to join her boyfriend. Seeing as no one else was willing to get off of their lazy rears to explain the very simple concept to the curious man, she felt obligated to do so. In a very bored tone, Cristina placed a hand on her boyfriend's strong forearm and began diving into a pool of carefully tucked away detail that none of the doctors in the room preferred to relive through Cristina's avid storytelling.

"During the holidays, the Chief claims he wants to 'give something back to the patients who are stuck here for Christmas' and 'bring us closer together as a family', when in reality, he's just trying to escape from his own holiday loneliness. So he eats up our time and only ends up straining most of us even more," Cristina elaborated in a bored tone.

Once the initial stun had passed through the tips of every neuron in his body, Owen laughed at how upset everyone looked over something so harmless. Izzie was so disheartened by Cristina's tall tale that she held a wad of tissues to her puffy red nose.

"So what do you mean by 'bringing us closer together'? What does he do, make you all do that trust exercise thing where you fall back into each other's arms?" Owen asked his dull company skeptically. He frowned when none of their expressions changed in even the slightest of measurements.

"Worse," Meredith retorted.

"_Much _worse," Derek added after removing his winter attire.

"He m—makes us p—put on a…_musical_," Izzie finalized, letting the last word roll off of her tongue for a dramatic effect and shortly blowing her nose afterward. Owen, still in denial that his fellow surgeons were telling the truth, tilted his head back and howled with laughter.

"Now I _know _that you all have to be joking! Doctor Webber is a brilliant surgeon, and I find it extremely hard to believe he would stoop to the level of musical theater," Owen remarked as he took a seat, still trembling with laughter. Cristina rolled her eyes at her boyfriend's defiance and joined him on the floor.

"Believe it, because it's true," the omniscient Miranda Bailey muttered in disgust as she trudged her way into the room with Lexie Grey and the other eager interns, including Steve, Lexie Grey, Megan, Meredith's old medical school friend Sadie, and Ryan on her tail. Lexie's humongous smile put an unwanted beam of light on the situation.

"Happy holidays, everyone!" Lexie cheered, ripping off her hat and shaking it, forming the illusion of a small snow storm. Everyone groaned in response. Owen found it interesting—and slightly scary—to see his colleagues, the people who fought over just about everything with one another, actually agreeing on something collaboratively.

"So he really does this?" Owen asked for what seemed like the millionth time, receiving irritated nods from the others. "And it's just for us?" Again, they all nodded.

"What are we talking about?" Sadie asked for all the confused, new interns. Everyone simply grunted a response to the lower class and turned away, occupying themselves with other things to keep their minds off of what was to come while the interns contemplated as to what could be happening.

George almost sent Sadie, who was sitting close to the door, flying as he burst into the room.

"Again? Seriously?"

"Seriously," Meredith and Izzie replied in unison.

Callie, who was busy texting an unknown, pushed past George and plopped down beside Izzie. Callie rolled her eyes at the sight of everyone with their index cards. Her luck hadn't been exactly anything to brag about over the past year, and now, the Chief's big move was the cherry on top of the whole mess.

Besides the beeping and clicking of Callie's phone, the room was awkwardly quiet. Everyone was thinking the same thing, but no one had the courage to say anything aloud.

Finally, the piercing blank noise was drowned out as Sydney Heron, the overly-perky resident, and Rose, the less than undereducated nurse, chattered away. Their voices carried through the empty halls of the hospital floor until the two women emerged, both of them linking arms on either side of Alex Karev. Alex was clearly in pain as the two shouted in his ear happily.

"Oh, Doctor Karev! What are the chances you, Rose and I would hail the same taxi!?" Sydney sang out in her natural, decaffeinated excitement. Rose laughed airily and Alex laughed along weakly. His tiny laughter eventually broke out into a subtle cry.

"Oh, the irony…the friggin irony," he replied to the best of his ability as he broke free from the two scary ladies' grasps and darted to Izzie's side. Izzie stroked her boyfriend's hand with her ice cold thumb, which he immediately pulled away from in an attempt to keep himself warm. Meredith chomped down on her lower lip to keep from laughing at her friend's peril.

"Ah, Doctor Karev, trying to take away from my pedestal as Ladies' Man around here, I see," the group heard a familiar voice bellow from the doorway, bag of chips in his hands.

Lexie jumped up to her feet in excitement and called out, "Mark!"

Mark smirked, ushering his visibly angry bride-to-be into the room with him as she blabbed away on her cell phone and carried both her and Mark's luggage.

"Yes, the happy couple has arrived," Addison remarked with a pout as she continued her conversation with whom Mark could only presume was Naomi. She glared up at her fiancé, holding up her hand and ready to smack him across the face, a threat Mark was accostomed to. "And seriously? Must we go around calling ourselves the Ladies' Man? Creative name…what are you, twelve?"

Mark simply smirked again after popping a potato chip into his mouth with a _crunch_. He gestured gallantly toward Addison.

"Excuse the Miss; she's been like this the whole drive over here. I'd say it's the wedding jitters or her love for long car rides talking, but I'm too afraid she'll slash my throat or something if I do," Mark explained. Addison shut her phone and narrowed her eyes at Mark.

Callie was the first brave soul to approach the couple, who had moved away to start their relationship anew and rainless in Los Angeles immediately after New Year's, and address them with the same question that was on everyone's mind.

"So, no call, no letters, no anything!" she began as she hugged Addison tightly. "How have you been?"

"Sorry," Addison apologized, her cheeks flushing with a red color.

"We've been busy," Mark added.

"Clearly," Cristina muttered, gesturing towards Addison, who was back on her phone and screaming something about flowers. The diamond engagement ring placed blatantly on her slender finger practically blinded the interns, who had not seen anything so big and shiny since their baby toys.

"I never thought you, of all people, would allow yourself to get wrangled into a big wedding, Mark," Derek mused. Mark rolled his eyes and jabbed a thumb in Addison's direction.

"Neither did I, but think about it, Derek. It's _Addison_. Big and showy is all she knows," Mark complied with a wink. Derek, upon knowing this information for over eleven years of designer labels and all of the jewels in the king's crown, bobbed his head in understanding.

"Just because I'm on the phone doesn't mean I can't hear you," Addison snarled.

Mark smiled and playfully messed with Addison's red hair, forming a fiery ball of frizz at the top of her scalp. "But she's my girl, the only one who could lasso me into marriage," he gushed with a smirk. Addison, who was beyond used to Mark's cockiness, smiled for the first time upon arriving in the conference room, relieving the group of their cautions to upset her in any way.

"But we're so happy to see everyone again!" Addison cheered for her and Mark, who was still gloating about his big achievement to doe-eyed George. Addison's smile faded as she gestured towards the two white cards in her hand.

"Even if it's under _these_ circumstances," Addison added with a shudder. She looked around the room at the faces she knew so well, and others who seemed unfamiliar. Addison laughed deep in her throat at the unsuspecting interns, who whispered and wriggled in their seats, as if they were awaiting a prize.

The Mercy West quadrant was next to arrive, in their usual huddled stance and whispering much louder than they thought they were. Jackson Avery, Reed Adamson, Charles Percy, and April Kepner, unwanted residents brought about by the merger between their hospital and Seattle Grace, finally realized after what seemed like forever that they had an audience and opted to join the interns on the less threatening side of the conference room.

"I still don't understand what's going on…" Sadie muttered in her exotic accent. Owen was about to open his mouth and tell her to not even bother trying when a shadow appeared in the doorway. The Chief always knew when to interrupt at the right moments.

"And that's why I'm here, Doctor Harris," the Chief answered swiftly. He began to circle around the room, greeting each and every one of the annoyed doctors with a swift flick of his wrist. "Ladies and Gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen! Welcome, welcome, welcome!"

"As many of you may or may not know, it's that time of year: holiday break!" the Chief cheered. Lexie clapped enthusiastically while Cristina banged her head against the nearest wall. "I'm assuming you all are here on account of receiving one of these in your mailbox." He held up a white index card similar to those in the surgeon's hands.

Steve the intern held up his card. "What do we win, Chief?" he asked. The other interns pounded fists and whooped in agreement.

Callie looked up from her tiny phone's screen. "Did he really just say that?" she remarked of Steve's eagerness, a smirk forming on her rosy lips. Alex sent Izzie an all-knowing look, suddenly grateful to be in on the joke before hand, unlike Steve, his comrades, and above all, the Mercy Westers.

"He really shouldn't have said that," Alex added, and Izzie nodded perkily in agreement, her high ponytail sending spews of blonde hair into Meredith's ajar mouth.

"Excellent question, Doctor…um…Steve," the Chief regarded the young boy, his last name slipping Chief's subconscious. He turned to the group, obviously divided by those who were suspecting of his scheme and those who were aiming for praise in separate corners of the conference room, and cracked a wide open grin.

"You see, the holidays—Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza, etcetera—are a time of giving and receiving, and they are a time to be spent with the people you care about most. But there are some unfortunate people, patients in this very hospital, who do not get those privileges. They cannot be flown out to their families, and they cannot be visited by those they care for due to inclement weather," Richard Webber explained, taking dramatic pauses and emphasizing words where he felt it was necessary.

"At the same time, I cannot help but notice that all of your behaviors have been sub-par lately. The constant bickering between you all, the relationship crises, your sudden moves to Los Angeles…" He chose that moment to welcome Mark and Addison back into his hospital. "…and your screw ups in the OR have been inexcusable."

Steve was paralyzed with confusion, his big mouth now twisted into one cartoon-shaped, tiny line. Owen, meanwhile, was starting to actually believe the words of his whiny co-workers. Every moment in the Chief's presence was making the scenario of a musical production more and more believable. Sadie shook her head, speaking up for all the interns.

"What are you saying, Chief?" she asked. The Chief smirked.

"Gang, we're putting another musical!" he proclaimed. A halfhearted 'yay'—save Lexie—flew up from one corner of the conference room, while the other erupted in pandemonium.

"What the hell?"

"Is he going _insane_?"

"What did I do to deserve this?"

"Omigod…"

"What's a musical?"

"Is this some kind of early April Fool's joke?"

"Ladies and gentlemen, contain your excitement for just one moment to let me announce this: our musical last year was a hit, and this _mandatory activity _will benefit us in so many ways. I've already got people _outside _of the hospital ordering tickets!"

Cristina's skinny dark eyebrow flew upward. "Wow. We're that good, huh?" she remarked sarcastically. The Chief sent back a sardonic little wave to the snarky resident and cocked his head.

"Let's just say you've all had enough practice in the drama department to make it look good. For surgeons, people were impressed, believe it or not."

"I believe it!" Lexie Grey squealed in hysteria. "What show are we doing, Chief? I loved_ Wicked_, but you know, I was thinking we could put on something happier…like…_Bye Bye, Birdie_, or…"

The Chief interrupted the little Grey girl by holding up a familiar playbill of a young woman, clad entirely in pink, carrying law books and being escorted by her Chihuahua. Lexie nearly collapsed in Bailey's arms.

"_Legally Blonde the Musical_! Oh, Chief, that's _brilliant_!" she gushed. If possible, the protests grew stronger in content and volume, as the feminist choice of musical only made matters worse. The Chief grinned and patted Lexie on the top of her head amidst the rage, as if she were a small dog herself.

"Thank you, Grey. I'm glad to hear that someone approves. And we can't get arrested for this one this year, since the show has gone off Broadway. The guy who I bought the rights from assured me of that when I showed him my restraining order from Stephen Schwartz," Chief told her proudly. Lexie's wrists looked boneless as she clapped even faster.

"Yes! This is going to be _awesome_!" she yelled before skipping off to rave about the show, which she had seen eight times in one week on a recent spree with her sister Molly to New York, to her friends. The Chief held up his large palms to silence the conversing surgeons in front of him.

"Auditions start tomorrow morning at nine AM sharp. Break a leg, Seattle Grace," he announced before walking off.

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**A/N #2: Hi there to old and new readers! So, as promised, tis the start of the sequel to "There's No Business Like Show Business"! For those of your who haven't read the first story, I wouldn't stress reading it, because I'll try to recap things from the original into this for my own sake. But yeah, I hope you enjoyed the first chapter. This second part of the series is jam packed with even more action and relationship fun than the last time. Legally Blonde, although it may seem obscure, was surprisingly wonderful when I first saw it in New York and it became one of my all time favorite shows, so I'm excited to mix Grey's Anatomy in with that. In addition, I know the first time around my pairings were never established, so I planned it out this time and made out a list for ya'll to make things easier (see above). Thanks for reading and please be sure to review!**

**-ILoVeWicked**


	2. Serious

**Chapter 2- Serious**

_SGH Legally Blonde the Musical Cast List:_

_Elle Woods – Lexie Grey  
__u/s – April Kepner  
__  
Emmett Forrest – George O'Malley  
__u/s – Jackson Avery_

_Paulette Bonafonte – Miranda Bailey  
__  
Warner Huntington III – Mark Sloan  
__u/s – Charles Percy_

_Professor Callahan – Richard Webber_

_Vivienne Kensington – Addison Montgomery  
__u/s – Reed Adamson_

_Brooke Wyndham – Meredith Grey_

_Kyle the UPS Guy – Derek Shepherd_

_Kate/Chutney – Sadie Harris_

_Margot – Izzie Stevens_

_Serena – Sydney Heron_

_Pilar – Callie Torres_

_Enid – Cristina Yang_

_Various Ensemble – Owen Hunt, Rose, Steve, Megan, Ryan, April, Jackson, Charles, Reed, Meredith, Cristina_

"Well, well, well," Mark grinned with pride as his large finger scanned down the list of names and parts and found his resting beside the part of Warner Huntington III, unarguably the most handsome character in the show, "looks like I should start firing up a resume."

After a day of auditions, in which the Chief had seen voices ranging from cat on a cheese grater to the cat's meow and some pitiful excuses for choreography, the cast list of _Legally Blonde _had been composed of. It took the Chief an unnecessary all-nighter to type up, but the piece of printing paper was weighted with huge authority to him.

"And just when we didn't think it was possible for your ego to blossom any bigger than it already is…" Addison remarked sarcastically as she cornered him to plant a light kiss on his lips. "Congratulations."

The already tall build of Addison Montgomery, something she took immense pride in, was three inches Mark's junior, therefore forcing her to reach on her tippy toes to get a good feel of each crevice on his lips. Mark found this trait unbelievably adorable, and upon knowing that this ounce of inferiority irked her, he set his fiancé off by stretching his heels higher off the ground just before she closed in on him. Addison's eyes turned to slits. Her heated temper came a close second to the tippy toes.

"The congratulations are mutual, my dear," Mark said back, making no casual effort to hide the obvious grabbing of Addison's behind. Callie had walked over at the wrong moment, snickered over the crude, expected gesture of Mark Sloan, and sent Addison's face beet red.

"Get a room much?" Callie teased, her voice tainted with mockery of her two best friends. She did not find it surprising to see how smoothly Addison and Mark molded together, all bumps and creases from last year's tensions nowhere in sight. She assumed it was the excessive UV rays getting into the two of them and making them so bright and shiny. "Don't you both work at a _private _practice?"

"You would think," Mark muttered, shuddering at the vast number of times he and his fiancé had been walked in on. It was never one particular person to do the act, on top of it all. Mark was convinced the Oceanside gang, especially the guys, were looking for a pick-me-up rather than a patient file.

Callie giggled at the immature comments that could have easily spewed from her mouth if she had possessed no self-control and raised her attention to the cast list and the coordinating scripts. As far as characters went, she had no idea who 'Pilar' was, but she was grateful that she only had one name to bear this time around. Memories of last year's debacle were nothing but pleasant to Callie: watching Mark and Addison's relationship blossom, her unlikely friendship with Alex, witnessing Derek in a bleating goat costume, and above all, her first real discussion with Erica Hahn.

"So," Addison began, unlinking herself from her other half, "as if we have talked _way _too much about us…how about you? Did things work out with Erica?" Her smile was innocent, inquiring nothing malicious, and yet the tears still blocked Callie's vision and thoughts. Addison and Callie had only stayed in communication for so long, hence Addison's awareness of Callie's change in orientation.

But the redhead had fallen out of contact with her friend way prior to find out that the happy ending Callie had inherited shattered. Once the show was over, Erica and Callie had become closer as friends. Hanging around the hospital and each others houses, the two had become inseparable. That was when Callie started to notice Erica in a different light, and though she was startled to find that she was head over heels in love with a woman, she was relieved to know that there really was nothing wrong with her when it came to love. She had just been looking in all the wrong places. All but a month ago, Callie had understood happiness. It was mutilated happiness that she would not normally comprehend, but with Erica, everything became a little clearer.

To others, love only came in two varieties: black and white. For those people, like Callie's father, for instance, there was no gray area, and there was certainly no color. The visit from Callie's pious paternal figure had rattled them both, but Callie did all she could to convince Erica that it hadn't affected her.

Surgery was her specialty. In surgery, there were clear cut directions, and when that failed, there was always a way to work around it. Nowhere was a handbook on love available. To this day, she did not understand what caused Erica to pick up her bags and retreat, leaving Callie's heart, world, and vision of a half full glass.

"It…um…it didn't really work out. I think she's working someplace in Chicago now," Callie admitted to her friend, the one person she could say 'lesbian' to a million times and never get a flinch out of.

Addison wanted to crawl into a hole at that very moment and smack herself with her script until she lost consciousness. Asking Callie that question, when she had not taken the time to notice that Erica was clearly not involved in the process again, had only made her feel like a horrible person. Not to mention it brought back thoughts of her own mother and father that she had been trying to cover up with lustrous wedding plans.

"Oh, Cal! I'm so sorry!" Addison cried once she found the right words. "If you need to talk to me at all, just let me…"

"Dammit!" Mark suddenly exclaimed, his presence at the script table going unnoticed until the outburst. Callie rolled her eyes.

"I know, it sucks."

"No, not that," Mark whined with a flick of his wrist, as if that would make all the pain of a broken heart cease. "I mean, it sucks that Erica screwed you over like that, but at least you don't have to kiss…"

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALLYGREYS

"Omigod, omigod you guys!" Lexie squealed, enveloped in a semi-circle of her fellow interns in front of the cast list. "I can't believe the Chief picked _me_, Lexie Denise Grey, to play Elle Woods! This is such an honor! Finally, those Attendings and Residents can stop being so disparaging and give us interns the respect we so deserve!"

Clearly, the Elle Woods naïve overconfidence and take-no-prisoners attitude had already taken over Lexie's brain and turned her into an indestructible, power hungry monster.

Steve held up his fist and sought to punch knuckles with Lexie. "Represent, Grey!" he cheered, sending the other interns up in cheers of victory. Had they been Roman soldiers, they could have very well taken over Sparta at that point.

Lexie no longer had time for the interns, for she had believed she had overcome the impossible by scoring the lead role in a hospital musical production. Pushing past her friends, Lexie held her script behind her back and moseyed over to where Meredith and Cristina were conversing and peering over their shoulders to make sure no one could hear their nasty comments.

"Hey there, sis!" Lexie greeted her half-sister giddily. "What's up? How did your audition go? What part are you playing?" The questions left Lexie searching for air and Meredith trying to piece together the fragments of Lexie's breathy excitement.

"Well, _sis_, if we're going by names now…I'm Brooke Wingding or something like that and Cristina's, um, Enid, I think," Meredith began, unsure of what the response would be.

"Guess who I am?" Lexie prodded, chomping down on her lip to keep from combusting in several victory dances. Cristina and Meredith sighed simultaneously with a bored tone that eluded they already knew the answer, but Lexie would not set the point to its grave until she got one last glimpse at satisfaction.

"Elle Woods! Can you believe it?!" Lexie cheered, throwing her script into the air only for Izzie's face to catch. Cristina rolled her eyes and muttered a short congratulations and Meredith bobbed her head with agitation while Izzie spewed curses. Lexie had not quite gotten the response she wanted from the two girls who had tormented her all throughout last year's production, so she continued to babble.

"So, Mere, you're Brooke Wyndham, meaning that you're put on trial for murder and have to perform the most fast paced song in the show, all while jump roping in a hideous orange suit! And Cristina…I believe your character is in love with every other female that crosses the stage," Lexie provided with a sickening sardonic tone.

Cristina's eyes grew wide, Meredith's face went pallid, and Lexie fought the urge to give herself a knuckle punch as she skipped off to share the glory with the rest of her cast members.

"Hey, Callie!" Cristina bellowed obnoxiously across the room once she could recount that the past two minutes were in fact reality, "Wanna switch parts?"

Callie acknowledged Cristina with the finger while Meredith slapped Cristina on the arm, secretly testing her own reflexes to see if she could move as fast as Lexie said the character required her to.

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALLYGREYS

Derek, Owen, Alex and George had all formed alliance since the dance audition that they would save themselves the humiliation of participating in such a frilly show by joining forces together to create one mega man.

There were exceptions, although, that could easily break the bonding of the Man Pact. For example, the caliber of the man's role in the show, especially if that character was a lead, was to be shunned immediately. In all honesty, the Man Pact was hardly a pact at all, just a way for each individual man to make themselves feel like they had more testosterone by watching the others suffer.

The second Derek scrolled his suave, surgical finger down the cast list and found George's name beside the male lead, George was ousted from the brotherhood.

"Oh, George! Isn't Emmett the lead guy part _and _a tenor? Between that and you sleeping with my girlfriend almost five years ago, looks like you've got three strikes and you're out!" Derek teased. George was about to use all of his strength to punch Derek's McDreamy smirk right off of his McDreamy face (and to prove to himself that tenors were just as manly as bases) when Alex stepped forward and filled the gap between the two "men".

"Yo dude, cut the guy some slack. I mean, he _just _became a resident a few months ago. Isn't that—and while were on the subject, his freakishly high singing voice—enough humiliation for him?" Alex bargained. Derek shrugged.

"Hey, I didn't make up the rules. Once you're out, you're out," Derek said smugly. All the while, Owen, who was typically a quiet person, had been scoping out the rest of the cast list and fighting back euphoric bouts of laughter.

"Then I guess that means, _you're _out, Derek. Check out who has to play the _named _UPS guy!" Owen cheered, interjecting himself right to the level of Derek's immaturity. Alex and Owen, the last men standing, slapped high fives to one another while Derek's finger made its way down the rest of the list until he located his name. To his horror, Owen was right. Derek let out an uncharacteristic yelp and angrily stalked off to whine to Meredith about the failed plan.

Alex and Owen chuckled at their friend's despair before making their way back to their girlfriends, leaving George alone and dumbfounded. Him, of all people—all, attractive people—playing the lead love interest? Obviously there had to be some kind of typo; George was no actor or singer or anything outside the boundaries of surgery, and last year made that painfully evident. There had to be a better choice. Perhaps he and Jackson, the understudy for Emmett, could switch places. He was about to straighten his complaint out with the Chief when Lexie came up behind him.

"Congratulations!" Lexie cheered as she wrapped her arms around George's torso, all past discrepancies from the last year evaporating. "This is going to be so much fun!" Once she came around to George's front, she timidly tucked a strand of silky brown hair behind her ear.

"You know, George, if I could pick anyone of these buttheads to play opposite of, I'd pick you in a heartbeat," she admitted before scurrying off and leaving George with whatever he chose to make of the statement.

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALLYGREYS

"Leads! I need my leads! Where are my leads?" the Chief beckoned as he ran up and down the corridor, plucking those he desired to see and pulling them in a chain behind him. Once he had assembled Lexie, George, Mark, Addison, Bailey, and Meredith, he lowered his voice ten octaves.

"Congratulations on being the leads, by the way. As much as I wanted to play favorites…Mark…you were the most talented of the bunch," the Chief said. Lexie beamed, and Meredith wanted to scrape the lips off of the little Grey with her long nails.

"Now that I have you all here, I'm sure you're all aware that last year's show was a disaster, cue wise. I am determined not to let that happen this year, and since I'm a fair person, I've taken the liberty of casting understudies for the four of you whom I'm sure will get into the most trouble…and because I only had four people to understudy."

"Wait, you don't trust us?" Mark asked, hurt. The Chief, still not over the fact that Mark had killed his oversized penny loafers in a tragic eighteen wheeler accident, nodded petulantly.

"Meet Charles Percy, Mark, you're understudy. He just so happens to be the most annoying thing that came out of the merger, and there were a lot of annoying things," Chief remarked as he thrust Percy forward. The man's smirk read trouble all over it and Mark glanced at the Chief with skepticism.

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. Addison, Reed Adamson. I'm sure you two will get along just fine, considering you both seem to be the center of unnecessary love triangles," the Chief said, whipping out the mousy Mercy West resident. As offended as she was, Addison accepted both the understudy and the truth.

"Lexie, you know April Kepner, right? You're both very full of Elle Woods spirit that I simply adore, and she's the closest thing I have to you."

Lexie tried to greet April with a smile, but April repelled the gesture with a snort. Lexie cowered back in her only defeat of the day.

"And George, this is Jackson Avery. He's cocky and arrogant, and you're…well…not, but opposites attract, so I'm forty-five percent certain that you two will click."

George gulped as the intimidating doctor, who had certainly passed his intern exam the first time around, took his place beside him. Surely, George mused, if not today, he and Jackson would switch roles.

"Bailey and Meredith, I trust you most, and I like you the most, so no understudies for you," the Chief wrapped up with a dopey smile. Meredith and Bailey uneasily thanked their boss, as they were aware of how neurotic he got during the holidays. Chief shut his clipboard and stared down the Mercy Westers.

"As understudies, I want the four of you to never leave your principle's side. Analyze them, analyze the character, and know what you're doing at all times, because I can assure you all that you'll be onstage as a lead at some point come show time. That will be all, folks!"

The Chief turned on his heels and began to waltz off, but not before he heard Mark's side comment to his fiancé:

"Jeez, we really should have stayed in LA."

The Chief was suddenly facing his leads again, his entire features gone ablaze. Addison and Mark were two people who he had once enjoyed the company of, but seeing them together and so happy without him, surgery and his hospital vexed him in every way. "That's _it_! I've heard about enough of you two and you're precious LA! Seriously, I don't get what is so great about one patient a day and a practice full of sunbathed psychos!"

As the words flew from his mouth in a raging spit shower that soaked Meredith and George, an idea struck Chief like lightning in the middle of a barren prairie. Chief stepped forward and grabbed Addison's cell phone. "You both are going to enjoy you're one week in Seattle, whether you like it or not. Now, if you excuse me, I have a call to make."

**A/N: Hi there! So I was able to type this up quickly (thank goodness for midterms...I never thought I'd say that) since my schedule was whacked up this week, but I hope you enjoyed the chapter and likewise, the casting. Just so you all know...NOTHING is permanent in casting, meaning that there WILL be some changes as the story goes on (I hope no one here is a Sadie fan, although she gets a major arch in the next two chapters...). **

**Also, just throwing this out there...the characters, and that is mostly all of them, are farfetched and over the top, I know. This is partially a spoof of both the musical and Grey's Anatomy, and it's all written in good fun. If you ask me Grey's just needs a little more sunshine. I still adore the show, don't get me wrong, and I love good drama, but I've seen far too much unesscessary drama around me in my life, and writing this is a way to escape that and perk me up. Don't let that discourage you from reading! That's enough of my babbling; I'm sure you're sick of this bold print. I'll try to update ASAP! PLEASE REVIEW!!!! :D**

**-ILoVeWicked**


	3. What You Want, Part One

**Chapter 3, Part 1 – What You Want**

It was a rainy day, nothing out of the ordinary, in Seattle. The tears of the miserable sky pelted seas of black umbrellas and soaked the earth. Seattle Grace's staff was more than used to the gloomy weather, often attributing it to be the cause of their problems. Addison had sought salvation in the sun soaked Los Angeles and hardly had to deal with rain, and when Mark had joined her at the practice as a plastic surgeon, he was at awe over how cities so close in location could carry such different climatic, emotional patterns.

When a doe-eyed young man stepped out of Seattle's airport doors, his t-shirt, khaki short, and flip-flop donned, tan body was greeted with the unfamiliar cold rush of buckets of rain in seconds. Millions of goose bumps stampeded the surface area of his bare arms and legs and precipitation clung to his once-suave blonde locks. He hasilty checked his watch and was shocked to realize that there was no time laspe between where he had departed and where he had landed. Where was the late afternoon sunset, painting wisps of warm colors across the blank canvas of the sky as the sun, a red hot ball of fire, set beyond the rippling waves off in the distance that he had come to know so well?

The boy, unmoving from his spot beneath the darkened rain cloud, could not bring himself to relocate his dripping body. He could only look up into the unwelcoming weather and mutter, "What?" just as an older man with his sunglass-covered eyes on his phone ran right into him and sent them both flying out into the foreign freezing air.

The older man, raindrops clinging to his five o'clock shadow, sought to immediately save the phone, his most valuable gadget, by stuffing it under his rolled up shirt and looked up begrudgingly into the moist air.

"Well, this is new, isn't it…" the older man muttered while ripping off his glasses to the blonde boy, who was struggling to lift his drenched baggage. "I haven't been this cold since the night Rhonda—I think that was her name; maybe it was Maggie—got pissed at me for some unthinkable reason and decided to leave me naked in her hot tub. Wait till the others get a load of this."

"I've never seen it rain this hard," the younger man added with several grunts over the heavy bag cemented to the ground. His friend tried to be of assistance, but it was to no avail. It was clear to any passerby that these men were obviously invaders, and neither of them was making any weight lifting records any time soon.

"This is disgusting!" whined a soft female voice that came up behind the two men. She was desperately trying to use a leather jacket as a makeshift umbrella. "I can literally feel my hair getting _frizzier _than it already is."

Her scraggly friend laughed and tussled the woman's puffy head with his wet fingers. "Nice," he remarked.

"Oh, quit complaining, all of you," a bitter blonde woman chided in a thick southern accent as she waltzed without effort out of the terminal and into the rain with her hand fishing about in her purse. She was the only one intelligent enough to bring an umbrella, but then again, she had been the only one outside of the California border in the past year. Reluctantly, she allowed the shivering boy and the woman with the massive hair under her umbrella. When the remaining man tried to sneak under for refuge from the sedulous rain, the blonde jerked the umbrella away.

"Rain'll do ya good. Maybe the cold will man ya up," the woman remarked. The man's shivering ceased for a second as he gaped at the blonde woman, whose pointed chin nearly hovered above the rain clouds.

"Oh really? That's real mature: let me get hypothermia, I don't care. It's not like I want to hang out under the umbrella of a _liar _anyway," he huffed, crossing his hairy, frozen arms across his chest. The blonde simply chuckled to herself.

"It ain't lying if you admit what you did to the person you love and trust. Naw, lying is perfectly exhibited in you, the coward hiding in a pediatrician's cushy body!"

The blonde abandoned the umbrella and stormed out into the nasty weather. She and her opponent eventually broke out into a heated argument, the sound of the rain blurring out the overlapping insults. The tinier woman who was currently losing the battle with her head rolled her eyes and looked at the blonde boy.

"As if we didn't hear enough of their arguing on the plane," she muttered, watching as beads of rain collided with puddles on the ground as they raced down the umbrella. The young man continued to try and balance himself with his bag as he nodded in agreement.

"And _why _can't you get them to make up again?" he asked after defeatedly letting the bag fall back onto the slushy ground. He rapidly began ramming ear plugs that he had been using all throughout the fight—he had been the boundary between the bickering couple for three very long, ruthless hours—back into his ears. "You're a therapist."

"First of all, it's not that easy," the meek woman stated calmly, as if her fellow doctors were not throwing a temper tantrum right in front of a crowded airport. "They are two very emotional, stubborn people who refuse to see things the other way."

"And the _real _reason?" the boy asked, knowing that his friend's lame excuse of an answer was entirely buttered up to seem like a bigger problem than it actually was. The therapist was ironically not that brilliant when it came to helping out friends, and everything she did always seemed to indirectly affect her. She sighed.

"One is my roommate and the other is my best friend," she admitted. "How the hell do you take sides on that?" The woman was spared from more therapy conversation with the young midwife when the owner of the leather jacket and a heavily swaddled baby rapidly made their way into the soaked huddle of Californians.

"Oh, rain," the man stated bluntly. "That's…" Usually a man filled with snappy comebacks and sarcastic remarks, this lightly dressed man was at loss for words, or anything witty, for that matter.

Looking from the quiet woman with the umbrella, to the pouring rain, to the baby in his arms, the man's eyes grew wide and for a moment, the calm, collective demeanor he had held onto all of his life since teenhood had vanished.

"I don't think we're in Los Angles anymore," the man grumbled as he tightened the loose bottons of the baby's light jacket. He regarded the lady under the umbrella with a wink, but had to do a double take when he spotted her interesting hair style.

"So, honey, when do we get down and boogey and play that funky music till we die?" he joked, receiving a glare from his girlfriend.

"I didn't _choose _to be born into a family of unfortunate hair!" she huffed. The collected man dodged another terminal argument by pulling the distraught woman into his available arm and planting a long kiss on her lips.

"I love it when you're angry," he gushed with a tap on her chilly nose to calm her. "It's cute." The frizzy haired woman blushed and the blonde boy made no effort to hide his fake gagging noises.

Next to exit the airport's dry inner units was a woman in a sun hat and a phone glued to her ear trotting out of the terminal, a bald man following her like a lost puppy dog.

"Hey, everyone!" the bald man greeted the rest of the group when he realized that the woman in the oversized, unnecessary hat was paying him no attention. "Flight was good?" The young man, still struggling to lift his damp luggage, plucked a plug from his ear and blinked at the man with the kind smile.

"Sorry, I had a difficult time hearing you over the bickering old married couple: did you say 'flight' or 'fight'?" the boy asked, his agitation reaching a very obvious boiling point. The very stressed bald man allowed his eyes to bulge as he took note of the screaming, teeth bared argument going on and disgracing the name of his people. He, being way too mellow to break up such an argument, knew he could be of no help to the agitated audience, but someone else could.

The ebony-skinned man called out nervously to the turned back of his ex-wife.

The woman was screaming things into her phone to whom all could only assume was her daughter in an attempt to be heard over the bullets of rain pelting the ground and wilting her hat ceased yelling. She snapped her phone shut with perfect timing and chucked a chocolate morsel at the sunglasses man's head, hitting her target and nearly snapping the pertruding vein in the man's head back into his skull. Cooper was shocked by the gesture at first, but after three hours worth of nasty air food, he plucked the chocolate from the ground and popped it into his mouth as a consolation prize for losing the face off with his ex-girlfriend.

"We're in public, get a hold of yourselves," the woman in the sun hat scolded. The blonde woman grew pink with tainted shame. Getting reprimanded in public by the snappy lady who left her job and in the process took a job away from her was not exactly flattering for a woman who cared an awful lot about what strangers thought of her. Although the woman on the phone still held power over the blonde, that did not stop the southerner from getting the last word in the fight. Very subtley, as to not be caught by the coffee-skinned highstrung nemisis, smacked her ex on the back of the head and forced the the chocolate to fly from his throat and into a dirty puddle.

"Alright, then," the bald man stated uneasily after watching that scene unfold, "let's get this show on the road!"

In only a matter of hours would that man's statement become all too ironic.

**A/N: Ahh...that's a whole lot of anonymous men and women. The overall goal of this chapter was to set up a major plot arch; some may call it a crossover. I tried to make it blatantly obvious as to who had come to Seattle, you know, telling you without actually _telling _you. Hopefully all that man and woman stuff wasn't too confusing. If so, I apologize and it will all make sense next half of the chapter (which was in fact so large I had to divide into two parts). Please, please, please review! I worked hard to write this along with my rehearsal schedule, so a little feedback would make all that work worthwhile :) thanks guys, i'll try to finish part deux shortly!**

**-ILoVeWicked**


	4. What You Want, Part Two

**Chapter 3, Part 2 – What You Want**

"Whoopee! Our first in a series of many shameful rehearsals," Meredith whined as she and a very sore Christina, who had gotten a taste of Owen's manliness the night before, trudged into Conference Room A. When they stepped into the room, they were greeted with the familiar holiday glare of the Chief.

"You're late!" the Chief bellowed to the girls, who stood blinking between him and the clock, dumbfounded.

"It's nine o' clock sharp. That's when we were told to be here, isn't it, Chief?" Meredith argued softly. In the past few months, the Chief had been showing an overdose of his usual favoritism toward Meredith, and the last thing she wanted to do was throw that away over a misunderstanding of time.

"In the theatre, to be early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late, and to be late is to be dead meat. Look at Lexie: she was here an hour before me, and she made us all lemon squares!" the Chief chastised, popping an entire baked good into the diameter of his mouth and creating a ring of powered sugar around his lips that even Sydney was too afraid to point out.

"Great, lemon squares. She can stick them up the Chief's butt with her nose," Cristina muttered to Meredith, who stood shell-shocked. "We're surgeons, how the hell are we supposed to know when Homo Explosion comes into session?"

As badly as Meredith wanted to laugh or repeat Cristina's words to the man of authority, all she could bring herself to do was apologize to her director quietly and take a seat with Cristina and the rest of the drowsy group. When the Chief resumed with his motivational talk of the day, Meredith whipped out her iPhone and ordered herself a copy of _Theatre for Dummies._

"Ladies and Gents of the cast of _Legally Blonde_, welcome to your very first rehearsal…"

"Snaps!" Lexie called out, standing on her chair and snapping her fingers wildly in a two-man-snap-fest that included only her and the Chief.

"And what is a first rehearsal without a little 'getting to know you' fun?" the Chief continued peppily, only to be interrupted by Izzie's erect hand in the air.

"Chief, we _all _know every single minuscule detail about each other, from who slept with who to how many surgeries they've screwed up on," Izzie countered with erudite accurateness. "Is a 'getting to know you' _really _necessary?" The Chief smiled and proceeded with his talk as if Izzie had never spoken.

"Let me reiterate: when I say 'getting to know you' I mean the people who will be working behind the stage, people you may be less familiar with. Last year, working with two people on stage crew was a disaster that was craftily avoided but painfully obvious. I am determined to make this year's production a lift off from last year, and to do that, we need a crew. At any moment, the group of people I've convinced to come to this room today will walk through the door and begin helping us out with the technicalities that enhance the acting."

"Don't tell me he hired the nurses! I _hate _the nurses," George groaned, creating the identical reactions out of the cast members around him, including Rose.

The door to the Conference Room creaked open and in stepped a familiar crew, looking in every which direction and murmuring amongst themselves. Addison nearly collapsed in Mark's unstable arms.

"Gang, meet the doctors at Oceanside Wellness Center in Los Angeles," the Chief declared proudly. At the mentioning of their practice, the California bred group found one focal point: the Chief.

"Doctor Webber? I'm Naomi Bennett, and we're here for the mentally disturbed child in need of a cure for his infectious disease and sex tips with parents looking to get pregnant again!" Naomi stated for the group, oblivious to how they had all been unrealistically lured down to Seattle. Addison rocketed upward, followed by Mark.

"These guys?! Seriously?" Addison barked, jabbing a finger over her shoulder at her co-workers. "You couldn't have rallied up a bunch of annoying nurses or family members or teenagers or _something_?"

"B—but…why?" Mark asked meekly as Dell—the blonde midwife had been looking to Mark as a mentor over the past months—tried to catch his attention. The Chief shrugged, coming off harmless to his new stage crew.

"Well, you're constantly raving about these guys all the time: 'LA this, needle guy that, ocean front property this, four patients a year that!' and quite frankly, I was getting sick of it. So I called them down here under the impression that they were all needed for a consult on a patient to see what was so great about them," the Chief explained. Naomi's brow went skyward.

"You mean to tell me that there is no patient?" she asked skeptically.

"Then why are we here?" asked Dell, shrinking away from the batting eyelashes of the female interns. The Chief moseyed over to the back of the room and clapped a hand on Dell's shoulder.

"You mean the happy couple never told you?"

"It's not something we ever thought would be a dinner table discussion, Chief," Mark grimaced as Addison fought to be seen by the Oceansiders.

In all her years living in Los Angeles and working with these people, she had gotten glimpses of each of their weaknesses and had done her best to help. Likewise they had shared in her pains. Constantly sharing secrets and investing on each other's trust was what the practice thrived on.

Never had a secret been so embarrassing that Addison felt the need to hide it from her trusted colleagues for a year until _Wicked _happened. Being a part of the Chief's emotionally, physically, and dignity draining musical was something she thought she could actually get away with disposing of without a word. The skeleton was coming out of the closet now that her co-workers got wrangled into the mess.

"Why, we're putting on a holiday musical for our patients here at Seattle Grace, because we're so damn kind, and we would be honored to have you be our stage crew!" the Chief said, inserting the unwanted second person to include the rest of the Seattle Grace cast.

Violet fought back laughter as Charlotte's upper lip curled into a pout. "We're doctors. We ain't surgeons, and we certainly know nothing about stage crew," she said. The Chief grinned at the fierce blonde woman.

"I'm sure we can find something you're all good at. Hop on stage, Oceanside, and get in a line," Chief demanded. The group obeyed at the sound of the Chief's voice. Addison and Mark stood paralyzed, discontented and in shock as they watched their friend's stand in a line across the stage.

"Now," the Chief began again, this time speaking into his paper towel roll megaphone that did nothing for the volume of his voice, "we're going to do this _Chorus Line _style. When I call your name, step forward and tell me a little about yourself. What you do, how much theatre experience you have, your favorite food…anything to let us get to know you better. Let's start with you, Shaggy."

The man with the Blackberry stepped forward with a sigh, knowing that if any of the Oceansiders were to be referred to as 'Shaggy', it would be him.

"Um…okay. I'm Cooper Friedman and I work as a pediatrician at Oceanside. I have absolutely no experience in theatre and I have no idea what a stage crew is, but I'm open to trying new things. I would describe myself as calm, funny…oh! And I hate lying bitchy blondes who have no souls."

"So, is he gay?" Sadie asked to Meredith, only to be swatted off by Cristina and regarded with a flick of the hair by Meredith. Cooper gave the Seattle Group an awkward wave and stepped back into the line, where Charlotte was waiting to strangle him.

"Great, Cooper!" Chief called into his 'megaphone'. "You'll make an excellent dog-handler!" Cooper's face fell.

"What?"

"Bruiser the dog, played by my cocker spaniel Sandy, should get along just fine with you. I just got her a few months ago after a wild night at the carnival, and she's not quite trained yet. Since you work with kids, I figure you should be good with puppies. I need someone to keep Sandy from running onstage and ruining my show. That would be you, my calm pediatrician friend!"

Cooper stood unblinking. Even to the hysterical laughter from Charlotte emitting throughout the room, he would not react. "Oh, okay. That's…great."

The Chief smiled and beckoned the very suave looking man in a leather jacket downstage. As he strode forward and winked flirtatiously, each of the girls in the room—save Callie—let out one simultaneous swoon that sent Addison rolling her eyes, the object of attention smirking, his girlfriend fuming, and the significant others of the women sputtering.

"Pete Wilder. Used to work in Doctors Without Borders and Infectious Disease until I moved to the practice to work in Western Medications…"

Mark, allowing reality to settle in much better than his fiancé, snorted at Pete's introduction. When Mark first set foot into the practice, he and Pete were not on the best of terms, especially concerning their medical professions and their baggage with Addison. Once Mark made his settlement permanent, he was shocked to learn that he and Pete had more in common than Mark could ever imagine. Pete had quickly filled that empty void that Mark gave up by moving away from Seattle and losing the conversations with Derek and Owen he could never have with Addison. Although both Mark and Pete were too proud and competitive to admit it, they were friends.

Pete glowered his eyes at Mark and inhaled deeply, "As I was saying…I've seen a show, but that was _Cats _when I was eight, so I guess I have no theater experience. And I ride a motorcycle…just throwing that out there."

"Oh…" Izzie drawled.

"My…" Cristina panted.

"God!" Meredith gushed, throwing a dainty hand over her pulsating heart.

Derek's eyes inflated to the size of his ego. Who was this Pete, coming in and taking away his entire surgical career's worth of making himself the McDreamiest with a wink and a motorcycle? One thing was for sure: he could perform all the tricks he had up his sleeve, but he would not lay one finger on his woman. Derek took that opportunity to slide his arm across Meredith's lower back, only to be baffled when she shoved it away.

The Chief stroked his scraggly beard and clicked his tongue against his teeth. "Hm…a motorcycle, you say? So you're good with knobs and buttons and such?" Pete nodded slowly.

"Great! You'll make an excellent lighting and sound director!" the Chief exclaimed. Pete shrugged, because the extent of his lighting and sound knowledge traced back to how to put batteries in a flashlight, but it sure beat dog handler. Charlotte was next to be called forward.

Following several huffs from Charlotte that clearly indicated that she had no intentions of being a part of the production, she spoke brutally in her Southern swagger, "Name's Charlotte King, Chief of Staff at St. Ambrose Hospital and a sexologist at Oceanside. I don't do theater. That's all ya'll are gettin."

She flipped her hair and strode back into line without bothering to hear her verdict. The Chief smirked, as this woman reminded him of a certain woman he knew and loved so well, Ellis Grey.

"I like you! Spunk is what I like most, makes people stand out. Since you don't 'do theater', which I will change by the end of this experience, Doctor King, how about you handle props?"

"Whatever," Charlotte muttered.

"Sexologist?" Izzie asked skeptically, prepared to burst. "Is that…like…real?"

"It is, actually," Sadie contributed.

"Did I ask you?"

"Sexologist or not, she's hot," Alex put in, smirking. "And fierce. She's…well…a hot, southern Nazi. She could be LA's Doctor Bailey."

"She _is _LA's Doctor Bailey!" Cristina muttered as she watched how Charlotte, no matter how broken up she and Cooper claimed to be, held her boyfriend and every other one of the Los Angeles clan on a tight leash.

Bailey just so happened to be overhearing, and needless to say, she was hurt. It was not by the fact that she had been insulted by her former interns, deciding to once again resurrect that awful nickname of the Nazi, that irked her to an unfathomable degree of anger. Bailey was appalled by the fact that the residents were basing an assumption over fact. Having been to Los Angeles and personally getting the opportunity to meet Charlotte King while she was in town, Bailey knew for certain that the southern woman's bark was much bigger than her bite. Miranda, on the other hand, prided herself for keeping that scale of action and word in balance. She made a mental note of proving to her interns that Seattle had only enough room for one Doctor Bailey.

"Um…well, hi! I'm Violet Turner, and this is my son Lucas, and I'm a therapist at Oceanside. I played a munchkin in my elementary school's production of _Wizard of Oz_…no wait, that was my best friend…I _saw _my elementary school production of the _Wizard of Oz_! Other than that, I don't know a whole lot about theater," Violet stammered awkwardly, all the while struggling to fix her hair. She had never been good in front of crowds, which explained why she went into such a secluded profession.

The Chief eyed Violet and the baby boy bouncing on her hip. He knew he had seen her, or at least heard of her, before, and he was determined to stare Violet down and make her even more uncomfortable about being center spotlight until he figured it out. Finally, after what seemed like hours of silence, with the exception of Violet's crackling hair, the Chief threw his pen over his shoulder in accomplishment and nearly whacked George in the eye.

"Hey! You're the lady who got attacked!" the Chief exclaimed bluntly, not taking into account that Violet nearly dropped her child over the accusation. Eyes wide and legs shaking, Violet nodded slowly as Pete crept up behind her to catch her if she fell.

"Yes, I am?" Violet stated nervously. Several other voices in the cast popped up in recognition of the news story that they had seen and briefly associated with Addison's practice over a year ago. The Chief cocked an eyebrow as he made the relationship connection between her and Pete.

"So, you're like, not dead? The way the news here in Washington presented it, it looked like you were a goner," Chief asked. Violet's laugh went hysterical as she nearly flung her son into his father's arms. Addison cleared her throat and rocketed upward.

"Nope, not dead, just crazy. Not 'hide in the closet' crazy, though. Long story short: Pete knocked Violet up, Violet sleeps with other guy for a while, Violet is thoroughly confused when she realizes that she has two possible baby daddies and holds off on any paternity test, Violet comes to a decision that she loves Pete, Violet gets mangled by crazy patient, Violet almost dies and I kick ass in an _amazing_ surgery, Violet goes insane, Pete gets baby and baby daddy bragging rights, Violet takes almost a year to come to her senses and finally decides she wants a family…the two have been inseparable ever since."

"Not true!" the couple onstage exclaimed together. Upon realizing that Addison was right (she always was), each turned a bright crimson and laced hands, never taking their googly eyes away from the other. There was no denying the disappointment in the female Seattle Grace staff's faces when they learned that Pete was off the market.

"Okay, Miss Turner. Seeing as you're not crazy or suicidal…or dead… I can trust you with a needle, right?"

Violet's nose crinkled. "Huh?"

"You'd be perfect for making costumes for our actors! Okay, Baldy, you're up."

"Sam Bennett, a self help doctor and a former heart surgeon. I live next door to Addison and Mark—and may I just point out that you _can _close your bedroom window every once in a while, guys…I'm serious—and I have a habit of inappropriately falling in love with people. That's pretty much the extent of my special talents, other than what I've been told about my dancing skills. For the record, I don't have any idea what a stage crew or a musical production is. "

"Poppycock!" the Chief spat. "Do you people know anything about theater?" He spun around to Addison and Mark, both of which were finally calming down when they realized the opportunity for humiliation had occurred to none of their Los Angeles friends.

"I'm not seeing anything spectacular about them so far, except maybe the dead lady," Chief retorted, causing Violet to give up arguing that she was in fact not a ghost. Mark shrugged, still not quite on the Chief's good side after killing the Lucky Loafers a year ago.

"I would say that's an unfair argument," snapped Charlotte. Seeing as the incredibly attractive newbie was not sticking up for the Oceanside Crew anytime soon, she took on the role. "You haven't even gotten to know us yet."

"So…hot…" Alex choked from somewhere in the back of the room.

The incredibly proud Chief disregarded Charlotte's remark by holding up his megaphone and calling to Sam, "You seem like you are a calm, cool, collected person, am I right?"

Sam's eyebrow arched, causing a rippling effect of folded skin forming to the back of his neck. "I suppose you could call me that."

"And you're good with a paintbrush?"

"The last time I painted something was a Mother's Day portrait of my momma in third grade."

"The way I see it, you'd be painting something a _little _larger than your mother's photo. Congratulations, Mister Set Builder!" The Chief took that moment to chuck a used smock in the direction of Sam onstage. Sam barely caught the article of clothing with one hand. Hands running over the chipped paint of the smock, Sam suppressed a groan when he remembered that he had only packed his best clothes for his trip to Seattle.

"Great…" he muttered, stepping back and letting the shy blonde boy step forward.

"I'm Dell Parker, and I'm a midwife at Oceanside…"

"So you live in the land of pink and squishy like Karev?" was the outburst that flew right from Cristina's large, uncontrollable mouth. Dell frowned.

"No, it's not all pink and squishy. You need to have certain midwifery skills to handle such a job maturely and accurately. I have no theater experience. That being said, I also surf, play guitar, and do the best that I can to be a good father to my daughter, who is being baby-sat because I was smart enough to leave my kid at home."

"Hey!" Violet and Pete chorused.

The Chief, getting bored of his own game, stopped trying to come up with legitimate reasons to make the Oceansiders feel special about getting the underappreciated jobs of the stage crew and just assigned Dell to curtain pulling duty.

Last to step, or flounce, toward the Chief was a very eager looking Naomi.

"Hello, there! I'm Naomi Bennett and I am a fertility specialist at the practice one floor below Oceanside, which is kind of ironic now that I think about it since I had originally established Oceanside with Sam…anyway, I love chocolate and gossip and shopping for nice shoes. Now, nobody else knows about this, but all my life, I've been a closeted musical theater fan."

The Chief was suddenly on his feet, one-hundred-percent alert. "You are?!"

"You are?" Addison exclaimed in stun.

"You _are_?!" Sam fumed, embarrassed that Naomi felt the need to keep that secret hidden from him.

Naomi nodded proudly. "I went through a phase in my early teens where I wanted to be on Broadway, win a few Tonys, live in New York City, all that good stuff. My mother took me to a show once a year. I knew every Broadway musical and every legend to ever cross the stages of New York, and in the worst way I wanted to be one of those people. So I went through some extensive training and was ready to start auditioning when I realized that I have a stronger love for medicine after my aunt explained to my mother how she had frozen some of her eggs in case further technology was developed.

"I still haven't let go of that dream completely, I suppose. I still keep up with the stars and shows on the Great White Way, and I often find myself humming or singing show tunes wherever I go. It's funny, but I still have my Tony acceptance speech that I scribbled down one day in English class in the back of my desk drawer at home."

The Chief was moved. "That's it, my fellow theater lover! You're my new right-hand man, my new assistant director!" Naomi clapped her hands together.

"Oh, really? Thank you, Chief Webber!"

"Call me Richard. And since you seem to be the only one in this room with considerable vocal training, I'd like you to be the vocal director as well."

Naomi jumped from the stage to embrace the Chief in a hug only theater people would truly understand. Addison, once shaken from the horror that her best friend would have all along supported her _Wicked _torture, looked up at Mark.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" she asked her fiancé, tentatively watching as Naomi and Chief giggled and began making plans for the opening number. Mark stifled a laugh and nodded.

"Naomi and Chief working together? Too much power at one desk? I'm thinking catastrophe."

**A/N: So there you have it, the Oceanside crew are taking on stage crew, which is going to make for some intertesting interactions with the SGH clan. Let me know what you think. Next up, Sadie finally realizes that she is unwanted, Callie laments to an unlikely ally, and the residents have some fun with more McNicknames for the Oceansiders. Please review!**

**-ILoVeWicked**


	5. The Harvard Variations

**Chapter 5 – The Harvard Variations**

"Sandy! Sandy! Come here Sandy, c'mon girl! I have a treat, Sandy. No, no don't run into Sam's Delta Nu House! Sandy, please stop licking Sam's head. Sandy, get out of that knot of wires. Stupid dog. I swear, the second I get my hands on her…_oof!" _

Cooper was sent spiraling back against the wall as his body came into contact with another body. He had been so focused on the floor of the darkened backstage, chasing after the Chief's untamed animal, that he had failed to notice that their were other human life forms around him. His responsibilities—Cooper claimed they were obligations—involving Sandy had taken a turn for the worst the moment the Chief left the man and his dog alone.

Sandy proved herself to be even more uncontrollable than the Chief had made her out to be, and all of Cooper's undivided attention went into the dog's safety. He had no time to mingle with his friends or meet some of the Seattle Grace staff like the others could, but rather, he had formed a new enemy. He was a doctor who worked with _children_. Children did not pee on his shoes or bite nurses or wreck set pieces.

He did not like Seattle. It was rainy and the people were rude and Christmastime actually felt like Christmas time. In California, no one forced him to get involved in musical theatre or baby-sit a canine.

Cooper groaned, hand to his throbbing head, and gazed up at the person who had so kindly decided to stand in his way of killing one of the stars of the Chief's show. Callie, dog in her arms, stared down at the feeble man. Large chocolate brown orbs practically screamed sarcasm to poor Cooper.

"Looking for something, Annie Warbucks?" Callie remarked, head nodding in the direction of her cradle-like arms, where Sandy was miraculously staying still and panting wildly. Cooper sighed, making no attempt to hide his disappointment that Sandy had not been electrocuted by Pete's mass of tangled wires, and hopped to his feet.

"Um, yeah. Sorry about running into you like that, but that mutt…"

"…just needs a little attention, that's all," Callie finished, cooing and rocking the wriggling puppy as if it were an infant. "The Chief is probably the worst dog-owner ever, so that explains why Sandy's looking for attention from you in all the wrong ways. I think she senses that she can trust you, since you're so good with Violet's son."

"And you got all of that from holding a dog for five seconds?" a very confused Cooper pointed out. Callie shrugged and placed the dog in his arms. Immediately, Sandy began pouncing around Cooper's upper body and Cooper quickly forced every muscle in his body to condense to its tightest form. Callie chuckled lightly and scratched Sandy behind the ear.

"Stay calm. Relax and treat her like you would a baby."

"Um, Miss…it's a _dog_."

"But a baby dog at that. Look, I don't know a lot about life, but I know enough to understand when a puppy wants affection. Just shut up and pet the damn dog," Callie snapped finally, having little patience with Cooper's impudence.

"Jeez, okay, I'll pet the dog," Cooper replied, defeated. Hesitantly, his hand rubbed against the satiny coat of Sandy's head and upper back. He was shocked to discover all of Sandy's writhing cease and her soft head nestle in the crook of his elbow. Callie smirked.

"See? She likes you after all."

"Wow," Cooper spoke, never ungluing his eyes from the display of affection before him, "thanks."

"No problem," Callie breathed. The momentary release of anger towards Cooper had passed, and once again, stress and loneliness knotted up inside of her. Cooper caught the look of unpleasantness in Callie's features and placed Sandy on the ground, latched onto a leash just in case she should decide to bolt off.

"So, what's up with you? I mean, what are you doing backstage when you could be socializing with your surgeon friends or catching up with Addison?"

Callie was taken aback, rosy lips forming a perfect circle over the allegation. "I—I have no idea what you're talking about."

"I highly doubt anyone would come back here for fun. There has to be a problem if you would rather be backstage, _alone, _than with your friends," Cooper restated in finer detail. He had a therapist for a best friend and a colleague; he knew when he was dealing with a bottled up volcano awaiting eruption. He knew _he _for one did not particularly enjoy being backstage alone. Callie's hands sought solace in her messy black curls and her eyes found her sneakers, firmly planted on the safe ground.

"I just like to be alone sometimes, that's all."

"No you don't."

"How would you know what I like and what I don't like? You don't know me."

"But I know people like you. I've seen people harbor their emotions in ways much more constructively than you are, and I've seen better liars than you in my day as well. So talk. I'm not Sandy; I don't bite."

The playful wink and the relaxed body language proved to Callie that her thoughts could be confided to this man. After all, they did not know each other, and that ruled out all judgmental remarks and personal opinions based on past relationships with her. Callie sighed and seated herself on a box of lights. He may change his mind about her once he learned of the unwritten details that made up her distinct character.

"I'm a lesbian."

"So? I'm Jewish. I hate dogs. I use women's shampoo because it gives my hair a more lustrous shine."

"You're not going to judge me for that?"

"Nope," Cooper answered as he joined her on an identical box three feet away. "Who am I to judge your personality? I figure that if you're willing to tell me your life story, than you have a right to know mine." Callie grinned. She liked the cuff-sleeved, scruffy pediatrician much more than she had expected to.

"Okay then, I won't give you _every _detail about my life, because we'd be here forever, but…the reason I'm hiding back here is that I'm lonely. I know, I know, 'But Callie, you are surrounded by your closest friends! What do you mean, you're lonely?' and I don't mean I want a friend. I have plenty of those. I stand there and try to be cool, but it feels like everywhere I look I'm surrounded by happy couples: Meredith and Derek, Mark and Addison, Cristina and Owen, even your friends Violet and Pete are unbearable to look at and not be constantly reminded of my own screwed up love life."

She half expected to look over and find the box Cooper perched himself upon to no longer be vacated, but he was still there, crouched in the same position as he had been in when she started talking. Not a line on his face read discontent or misunderstanding, and she finally relaxed, breathing out the jumble of high-strung emotions that had been playing at her heartstrings since Erica left.

"Your turn," she muttered.

Cooper's spine straightened as his large finger stretched out beyond the wing to pinpoint the frustrated southern belle at the prop table. "See that woman over there? For a while we were together, and I loved her, but she told me something that I couldn't forgive her for. I refused to listen to her, I was horrible to her, and as a result, we're done. We were people too similar to last without any cracks in the foundation, and our obstinate natures caused it all to crumble. She hates me now."

"Go ahead," Cooper breathed, his mood significantly dampened. Talking things out seemed to have opposite effects on him and Callie.

"Maybe my history wouldn't be so screwed up if I hadn't have broken up with Alex. We had this…fling, if you can call it that, during _Wicked. _For a while, I thought I had found happiness in him, but then I met Erica and I realized that the only thing making me happy with Alex was the idea of being in love. With Erica, I was actually living it. So Alex and I agreed that we would stay close friends, but now that's an abandon ship considering that he and Izzie are practically engaged."

"What happened to Erica?"

"Left when things got rough and my father disapproved of my orientation. Couldn't handle the rejection, I guess. Since then, I've been constantly alone and unsure what is best for me. Maybe I'm better off becoming an old maid with fifty cats; I never really wanted the marriage, kids, golden retriever fantasy anyway," Callie lamented, that last remark a downright lie. She had always imagined herself with a dozen kids and a white picket fence, she could just never picture who would raise those children, who would have put the fence up, who would bring home the dog.

"Everybody wants the golden retriever thing," Cooper stated. "Hell, I thought Charlotte and I had it. I still want it…with her. I still love her, but I highly doubt I'll ever be able to make things right between us."

The two sighed in tandem, and Callie, brow furrowed deep in self-pity, mumbled, "We're quite pathetic, sitting here with a dog…that is peeing on you…"

Sandy was positioned swatting over Cooper's foot, a stream of fluid flowing from her rear end. Cooper simply rolled his eyes, seeing as his shoes were ruined from the first ten times the dog decided to pull the prank that day. Callie cringed at the sight of the puppy urinating on him and continued:

"Seriously, look at us: you're all hopelessly devoted to LA's Nazi and I can't even hold onto a relationship for more than a few months. What's worse, neither of us are doing anything about it."

"Now, that's not true!" Cooper cried once Sandy was finished with her business.

"Cooper, we're sitting on boxes backstage while my boss puts on _Legally Blonde the Musical_. I think it's safe to say that we're not getting off of our asses anytime soon."

"Not that! What you said about you being pathetic, that's not true! There's no hope for me because I'm a bastard, but you've got so much to look forward to. I don't even know your name, but you make a good first impression, and you're beautiful. Why, you could have anybody you set your sights to, man or woman. They just haven't walked into your life yet. Hey, and if you don't find anyone right now, keep yourself happy until you find them! Don't ever tell yourself you're pathetic. Ever."

Callie's lips pursed in a modest, tactful response when she realized that Cooper was right. All the time she had spent moping, she could have been testing her oats and searching for her own happiness. Callie smiled and nodded, her thoughts no longer in Seattle Grace, but in a world of her own.

"Yeah, I'm in a long-lasting, trustworthy relationship with myself! I don't need anyone to dictate whether or not I'm healthy, lonely, or happy…"

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALLYGREYS

As tradition called for, the five most talked about residents isolated themselves at their own cafeteria table during lunchtime to gossip over the days happenings. Cristina and Meredith were first to seat themselves at the special round table that had their names written on it—literally, Alex had taken a scalpel to the plastic furniture their first year as interns—and began to dig in. In a matter of minutes, they were joined by Izzie, Alex, and a straggling George.

"Let me be the first to say that I don't like these sun-bathed, older versions of the Hills cast," Cristina grumbled past a full mouth of sticky peanut butter. Meredith shook her head.

"You just don't like them because they don't have to do the harder job," Meredith retorted, popping a mini-corndog into her mouth. Cristina nodded in agreement, for she had no other logical reason to hate the strangers Addison had left them all for. Alex smirked.

"I still think…"

"Charlotte's hot, we know," Izzie huffed, throwing her forkful of salad back into its Styrofoam container with vigor. "Must we bring it up every five seconds?" Alex shrugged and grabbed one of Meredith's corndogs, since he had been too lazy to stand in line and buy his own lunch.

"I'm just stating a fact, that's all, Iz."

Izzie rolled her eyes in the over dramatic way she could pull of so well and continued to munch on her salad. "Besides, Charlotte's _nothing _compared to…" Izzie took a moment to let the rest of the girls start to melt along with her.

"Pete!" the ladies harmonized, reminding George of his Jonas Brothers loving nieces. Alex chuckled sarcastically.

"Yeah, okay, I'd pay _big _money to see any one of you try to pry him off of that Violet chick's lips," challenged Alex, silencing the school girl chatter across from him. Cristina took another hunk of her sandwich, cat eyes narrowing at the disappointing fact that Pete was consumed by his perfect little family.

Meanwhile, only several tables away, Sadie Harris sat behind a newspaper and scanned around the nearly empty cafeteria like a hawk until she spotted her best friend and the rest of the bunch at their special table. She counted Mississippily in her head to thirty before she abandoned the newspaper and crept over to Meredith's table, tray of food gripped tightly in her hands. The fivesome were constantly letting others sit at the table: Lexie, Owen, and Callie to name a few. Surely they would make another exception for her. After all, she was Meredith's best friend from medical school.

"Hey, guys!" Sadie greeted them, feigning confidence and cheer. Five pairs of scrutinizing eyes found contact with Sadie's trembling body and it did not look like any of them were moving until Meredith spoke up.

"Hey, Sadie. What's up?"

"Oh, nothing. There's just, like, nowhere to sit in this crowed café and I was wondering if I could take that empty seat," Sadie explained without a single stammer. The five seemed to notice for the very first time that there was an empty sixth chair. Unreadable expressions darted toward Meredith from all angles of the table until Meredith finally nodded with obvious reluctance.

"Sure. Alex, move over and make some room for Sadie," Meredith droned. Sadie took her seat, the victory far less satisfying than she had anticipated it. Though there had been physically enough room for Sadie, as the conversation between the residents went on without a regard to her, she noticed that socially, she was far outside the circle.

Izzie gasped and clapped her hands together joyously. "You know what we haven't done in a _long _time?" she began. Meredith's eyes went wide with the same joy Izzie contained.

"Tequila Jell-O shots?!"

"Um, yes and no…what I meant was that we should give the Oceanside people McNicknames!"

"Ugh, no more McNicknames!" Cristina groaned. Alex grabbed another one of Meredith's corn-dogs and exclaimed joyously through a mouthful of meat and bread:

"Hell yes, Iz! Come on guys, it'll be just like old times!"

"Ooh, McNicknames? What are those?" Sadie asked, nibbling on her carrot sticks. The group nearly saw right through her as they leaned in and started plotting creative pseudonyms for the Los Angeles group.

"That Cooper guy is easy. We can call him McScruffy," Izzie began breezily. Cristina rolled her eyes.

"You've been thinking about this, haven't you, Izzie?"

"Only some of them, Cristina! Besides, isn't Cooper all scruffy looking? And he's dealing with the dog, so it makes perfect sense!"

"McScruffy…I like it," Meredith finalized. "How about…Pete!"

"McHa-min-ah-Ha-min-ah," Cristina answered, hand over her fluttering heart. Izzie threw her head back in fits of giggles and nodded with excitement.

"Love it! See? Who says this musical can't be fun!" Izzie cheered. Cristina and Meredith were gripping onto each other for support to keep from falling out of their chairs. George and Alex made no attempt at muffling their gagging noises. Sadie gnawed at her vegetable until the orange carrot was reduced to a nub.

"Violet?"

"Can I just point out that she's too nice? I mean, we were getting costume measurements yesterday and all she could do was compliment Mere and I," Cristina explained, nose in the air. She did not respect or praise compliments that went beyond her realm of surgery.

"Not to mention the PDAs with Pete that are almost arousing to watch," Alex added in. "But I'm half-expecting her to snap right here again. I mean, she's mentally unstable after that crazy baby lady thing, right?"

"She reminds me of one of those beauty pageant contestants," George chimed in. "All pretty and sweet on the outside but something catty and sinister on the inside."

"I've got it!" Meredith exclaimed, snapping her fingers. "McCongeniality!" The group agreed and moved onto their next victim while Sadie wanted to move on and find another table.

She could not understand how she had sat next to Meredith the entire lunch period and had not gotten one response out of her. In all their years of unconditional friendship back in medical school, the late night wild escapades, the class chit-chat, and the friendly competition, Sadie would have never dreamt of seeing Meredith Grey laughing and socializing, and on top of that, alienating her on purpose.

"Charlotte?"

"Can she _please_ be McFierce?" Alex begged. "Or something dirty? Like Mc…"

"How about McBlondie for lack of a better term," George supplied quickly, receiving a relieved glance across the table from Izzie, who was having a difficult time coping with the jealously that came with her boyfriend's new crush.

Alex rolled his eyes. "That's clever," he remarked. Sexism played the majority card at the lunch table, Alex felt. It was unfair how Pete got to go by Ha-min-ah while Charlotte went by Blondie. He supposed that was his punishment for making friends with four girls, one of which being George.

"It's good," Meredith stated defensively, this time swiping Alex's greedy hand away from her lunch when he dove in again for another corndog. "How about that Sam guy?"

"Sam doesn't get enough credit when Pete's around, but _boy _is he attractive!" Cristina noted. Meredith nearly dropped her corndog as she realized what Cristina was saying had been in fact true.

"Ooh, you're right. I'd like to touch his muscles."

"And he's got such a nice smile!" Izzie gushed. "Have you seen how bright his teeth are?"

"McShiny?" Meredith asked.

"McShiny," the group approved.

"Dell?"

"Well, he said he was a midwife and I overheard that he used to be an intern for the practice, so he must have gotten them coffee. If we're sticking with the "eamy" theme somewhat, how about McCreamy?" George explained. The name received a much more positive outcome than he had anticipated. Even Alex agreed with the choice wholeheartedly.

"Oh, what about the Chief's new best friend?"

"Naomi…" George scanned his brain for anything that might stand out to him from the five minutes where Naomi had introduced herself until Alex butted in.

"McKiss-Up," he declared proudly. The group burst into a simultaneous laugh, like a pack of hyenas.

"Oh, don't you think that's a bit harsh? It makes the Chief happy to see someone expressing the same interests as him," Sadie reasoned, only to be snorted at by Cristina, who slurped loudly on the straw of her chocolate milkshake.

"That's the _point _of the McNicknames. They're supposed to humiliate and tear apart the owner. Just look at McSatan—I mean, Addison," she elaborated boorishly. Alex, who had stolen Cristina's milkshake, practically had chocolate spouting from his nose at Cristina's comment.

"McSatan!? That's horrible!" Sadie cried in shock. Dreaded questions began to flood her mind. Did the respected doctors who donned these names have a clue that the residents used such cruel referrals to them behind their backs? Did _she _have a McNickname? Sadie turned her attention to a very placid Meredith in shock.

"And you're _in _on this? You allow them to call them that?"

"Meredith pretty much _created _the McNicknames, Sweetie, along with Cristina," Izzie answered. Sadie's mouth contorted into an unrecognizable shape as she gaped in horror at her best friend.

"Meredith! My, you've changed. I mean, you were always one to come up with clever nicknames, but you never broadcasted them publicly!"

"Well," said Cristina, arm roping around Meredith's stiff shoulders, "this isn't medical school anymore, Sadie."

"Like Hell it's not!" Sadie cried, rocketing upward and sending Alex backward, following with a chocolate milkshake shower. It was a vile sight to see Meredith so close to someone so horrible. How could Meredith replace her for something as obnoxious, cocky, and rude as Cristina Yang?

"What am I even doing here? You clearly don't care about the four years we spent together as best friends, and if this half-effort at a friendship is going to be the rest of my surgical career, I don't want any of it. I'm out of here."

"Wait, Sadie," Meredith finally spoke when Sadie was halfway across the cafeteria. Sadie blinked back tears against the weakening levis of her eyes and spun around. She swallowed hard. She was really giving Meredith a second—more like a millionth, if she counted the attempts before that lunch—chance at rekindling the wildfire they used to create together.

"Yes, Meredith?" Sadie asked, masking the hope and hurt in her voice with a hardening of her accent. Meredith wrung her hands nervously in front of her.

"You can't leave…the show I mean. Chief has you under contract," Meredith stated dumbly. Sadie stared at the unfamiliar face of the stranger before her for a moment, and then she flipped her blonde hair over her shoulder.

"Screw the musical. It shouldn't be too hard for the Chief to find my replacement. You had no problem doing just that."

With those final words, Sadie Harris left Seattle Grace Hospital and left the cast one member short. Meredith watched her go before feeling the corndogs in her stomach begin to resurface and darting past her howling friends to the nearest bathroom.

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALLYGREYS

"…I am a strong, smart, confident, single, lesbian woman! And I intend to keep it that way for a long, _long _time! And furthermore…"

Cooper had lost himself in other thoughts somewhere in the middle of Callie's non-conformist rant, his attention drawn to the Chief, who was shaking hands with a blonde woman. The woman was all smiles as she returned the gesture, perched at a few inches taller than the Chief due to the wheels in her sneakers. She carried with her a tacky drawstring bag. On her bag she had pinned several icons revealing more about her character: a teddy bear, a "Peds Rules!" button, and most notably, a hand sewn patch of two pink female gender symbols.

Cooper cleared his throat. "Um, Miss, I hate to rain on your parade, but you might want to check out what's going on…"

"I need the cast and crew out on stage!" Chief bellowed, arms gripping the blonde lady in a tight hug. Cooper led Callie, still steaming, onstage and plopped her beside Addison. Once everyone had been assembled, the Chief escorted the alien woman onstage with the cast and stood erect with pride.

"In case any of you haven't heard yet, Sadie Harris, who was playing Kate and Chutney, has quit her job at Seattle Grace, therefore quitting the show in addition, because appearantly the term 'contract' means nothing to her. To answer any questions, yes, I did meltdown in my office when I heard the news, and yes, Naomi witnessed it, but after some careful thinking, we came together and found ourselves a replacement in only an hour. People, meet Arizona Robbins, the musical's new Kate/Chutney and our latest Peds surgeon."

The smiley Arizona's face changed its dynamic when she heard the word 'musical' come out of the Chief's mouth.

"Wait, I thought I was just here for the job…"

"Ha!" scoffed Pete. "So did we."

* * *

**A/N: Hello again! So as promised, updated chapter given in record time. Hope you all enjoyed that little plot twist ; as I said, nothing in casting is permanent. Let me know what you think and review please! Up next: we actually start getting into rehearsals with a few theater games initiated by Sydney...**

**-ILoVeWicked**

**Another note: I also hope you can catch the musical references I have been secretly sneaking into these chapters (ie: the Chrous Line interrogation process/Audra McDonald jabs last chapter). Trust me, there's plenty more of those coming your way.**


	6. Positive

**Chapter 6 – Positive**

"Whoo! What an invigorating read-through that was. I've gotten pretty good at this casting thing, haven't I, Nae Nae?"

Naomi, who had been sifting through the program from _Wicked _and observing the actors with all seriousness during the reading of _Legally Blonde_'s script, nodded her head in agreement. Seattle Grace's employment was in good hands with the Chief.

"Most definitely, Chief! Everyone really strikes me as having a connection to their character."

The Chief clapped his hands together and pulled his new assistant director into one of his infamous bear hugs. "Splendid! Let's get started with rehearsals, then, shall we? I am beyond excited to hear what these ladies can do with "Omigod You Guys", since we have an actual vocal director this time."

"Alright!" Naomi, ego larger than life, chirped after she and the Chief performed their 'Super-Secret-Director-High-Five'. She took hold of the Chief's megaphone and shouted, "Listen up! The Chief and I would like to see Lexie, Izzie, Sydney, Callie, Arizona, Rose, Megan, April, Reed, Meredith, and Cristina by the piano in five to go over "Omigod You Guys"! The rest of you go get your costumes done."

"We have a piano?" Izzie remarked as she, Meredith, and Cristina moseyed over toward the unfamiliar machinery. The closest any of them had ever seen to an instrument were surgical tools.

"We've always had a piano," Bailey answered sharply, taking a swig of questionable fluid that looked a lot like Addison's green juice from a plastic bottle. "You've just been too busy having sex in on-call rooms to ever notice it or do something productive with it."

Once all of the women were gathered around the piano, Naomi took her seat in front of the array of black and white keys and ran her hands over the ivory in a showy musical display that baffled the surgeons. Naomi's piano playing superpower gave each of the girls from _Wicked _the idea that things were going to be ten times more intense this time around.

"So, we'll begin on a hum," Naomi stated eloquently. The surgeons standing around the piano had all graduated at the tops of their classes, had all ran the gamut of graduating from top medical schools/colleges, and all excelled in the ER, but not one of them knew what start on a hum meant.

Naomi guessed she had jumped too quickly to conclusions when she noted eleven blank stares coming down on her. The former Broadway dreamer sighed and replayed the chord, demonstrating what was supposed to be done.

"Ew, wait…we're supposed to make all those noises?" Izzie asked in disgust, cheeks tainted pink at the thought of making odd noises in front her judgmental colleagues. Naomi smiled.

"Vocal warm-ups are supposed to sound strange. This is your time to experiment and let loose, because on stage is where it really matters, and I don't want you ruining the _Legally Blonde _score. Don't worry about what everyone else around you thinks, because you'll all be making the same sounds. Now, on a hum, please."

The group followed Naomi's lead-in and hummed an awkward musical mosh pit of noise that made the Chief's eyebrows touch the ceiling. Naomi cringed and her hands harshly slammed down on the next chord. The women were shocked to realize that the vocal warm ups did not stop at the first hum and went up the half step.

Slowly but surely, everyone was warmed up and finally comfortable with sounding like jungle animals, resulting in a fair run-through of the actual song. Naomi grinned with pride at her capability at getting doctors to make music and gestured toward the stage.

"Now, let's put those voices with some actions! Sam, is the Delta Nu house finished yet?"

Sam, his bare arms and scalp splotched in paint, appeared from behind the curtain, a scowl on his face.

"No…it's big and pink and ugly," Sam whined, referring to the wooden cut-out of a house he had been given, along with the very little instruction as to how it needed to be painted. "And it almost killed Pete back here because it has nothing to stand up with."

"Blocking it is, then!" the Chief opted after a momentary stare down with the attractive set builder. "Okay, ladies, grab you scripts and go where I tell you to stand."

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALLYGREYS

Violet Turner had never considered herself to be a crafty person. She preferred to live a very scripted, logically thought out life where every move was anticipated and planned. That was, of course, until she fell in love with Pete, got pregnant, and endured the C-section from hell. Life presented itself in unusual blinding color to her once existence as she knew it was ripped from the bolting beneath her feet. The transition from her comfort zone was strange and uncomfortable, to say the least, but she had finally adjusted to the changes around her.

However, being on the one man costume committee for a musical in Addison's former hospital sat fairly low on her list of unforeseen things that had happened in her life. Needless to say, it was all a bit surprising to her when medically renowned met critically acclaimed in the Chief's big musical holiday plans. Staying true to her new optimistic point of view in life, Violet had formed a pact with herself that no matter how bleak working as a stage hand for a week would be, she would discover something exciting and encouraging about herself that she had never seen within her before.

To begin with, it had been simple: taking a measuring tape and finding the calculations needed by each cast member to make the costumes. One hour's worth of fumbling to keep measuring tools in her hands, pricking herself with bobby pins, and tangling herself in pink, sparkly fabrics defeated Violet's pact until it was buried beneath a mess of complex mathematics and frills.

Violet, pins sticking from every angle of her mouth, struggled to keep a steady hand as she shakily wrapped a striped fabric across Addison's hips. Derek Shepherd stood on the stool beside his ex-wife, draped in Violet's biggest achievement so far: a lopsided brown collared shirt. Lucas hung in Derek's voluntary arms, chubby fingers elongated in hopes that he may touch the ground and the shiny, dangerous objects his mother forbade him from.

"I'm not cut out to do this, Addison!" Violet grunted through prickly pins.

Derek's free hand cascaded over missing buttons as he tried to even out his shirt and sighed. "No, I wouldn't say that," he remarked sarcastically. Lucas giggled as he kept himself entertained by grabbing forcefully onto Derek's nose. Addison sent the man a glare and smiled down at her struggling friend.

"You're doing fine, Vi. Better than any of us could do, especially Derek over here," said Addison, taking hold of Violet's pin holder and chucking it towards Derek, who dodged the bullet artfully. Her words spoke confidence in the bubbly brunette, but she did not dare look down at the skirt Violet was snarling over.

Violet's eyes went wide at the mentioning of the name of the man who was holding her son. "Wait, _you're _Derek? Derek, as in Derek Shepherd? Addison's ex-husband, Derek?"

"Violet, how the heck did you know my ex-husband's name was Derek? I don't think we've ever gotten to a point in our friendship of referring to our exes by name in conversations."

"Oh, we didn't, but Naomi talks. Keep that in mind," Violet answered without looking up. Half of her focus was dedicated to the project around Addison's legs while the other half greedily pried for dirt on Addison's past life.

"So, you're McDreamy, huh?" Violet mused, eyes involuntarily scanning the tall, polished neurosurgeon. To her surprise, Addison's former spouse fit the bill. She blushed crimson with mortification when her thoughts automatically drifted to the fact that she would be fitting tight, short shorts to match the mess of a shirt on Derek.

"I—I um, I guess I could see that," Violet mumbled to herself, wanting to take her needles and sew her mouth shut. Derek flashed a pearly white smile toward Violet, who could barely keep from combusting in Conrad Birdie fan girl screams. Addison watched the interaction go on with a slight twinge of humor, seeing as she still had her resentments toward both Violet and Derek.

"Violet, are you okay?" Addison asked.

"Yeah, you look stressed…do you need help?" Derek agreed innocently. "Here, let me just take this shirt off and I'll help you out…"

"Pete! I have to get back to Pete!" Violet screamed with all of her remaining willpower before shooting upward and sending below her a rainstorm of sewing supplies.

Derek watched the woman in all her frazzled glory scurry off in oblivion while Addison cackled. The two were suddenly alone, dressed in Violet's garments, and the awkward air settled in around them. The longing to be as close as they had been years ago, present in both of them, did not help the cause any further. As if they had not courted for eleven years, they were suddenly expected to act like old acquaintances each time they reunited, asking the usual hellos and how are yous.

It was obvious that they had each, in their own way, moved on. They were, ironically, both engaged to the dirty mistresses that had put an even greater strain on their freefalling marriage only a few years ago. They had found success and happiness at work and at home.

But that did not mean that they never missed the presence of each other from time to time. There were times when Derek would run his hands through Meredith's tangled blonde locks and ache to feel silky red strands between his fingers, or times when Addison would make Mark's coffee the way Derek used to like it: two creams and one sugar. Neither would admit it first, for fear the other would laugh in their face for not feeling the same way.

Derek took a leap of faith when he cut the customary, uncomfortable introductions and said, "She left her baby here."

Addison laughed airily, the abstract statement all a bit too ironic concerning the year in Los Angeles' happenings. For a brief period of time, while Violet had been emotionally absent toward the little boy, Addison had filled the role as mother to him. Much to the protests of the others in the practice, Addison and Lucas both knew that he was aware of who his mother really was. It came as no surprise to Addison that Lucas became a momma's boy once Violet returned to his life.

"At least he likes you. Lucas is pretty picky when it comes to his friends."

Derek blew the little boy a raspberry over his protruding baby belly and a smile spread across his face as Lucas clapped his hands. Kids had always been a huge want in Derek's life, but surgeries, success, and complicated love triangles always got in the way. The blue eyed, chestnut haired child in his arms, fawning over his nostrils, brought up a feeling of nostalgia of how he used to want a child with Addison.

"He's a cool kid," Derek said, slightly in awe over the tiny life wriggling in his grasp.

"Well, it's because he's got a cool aunt. He hates Mark, though. You'd get a kick out of it. I know Pete loves to rub it in Mark's face that babies love him more…"

"What's the deal with this Pete guy, anyway?" Derek asked with a pout. "Were you two ever together?"

"Kind of, I guess, but he's always loved Violet, and who am I to stand in between that? Besides, _Wicked _happened right after the whole baby mama saga played out, so everything must have happened for a reason."

"Yeah, I suppose you're right. So…what does he, like, _do_?"

"My, Doctor McDreamy, you're awfully curious today, aren't you?"

"No, I just feel like I have a right to know about these people, since they clearly know so much about me," Derek shot back defensively, not doing a very good job at covering up his sleuthing. Addison rolled her eyes.

"If you must know, Pete works with alternative medicine, meaning acupuncture, herbal remedies, all that good stuff that you and Mark refer to as witch doctoring," Addison elaborated. "And before you say anything, I feel the need to stick up for him by saying that he's a great guy. He's soothing to almost all of the patients at the practice, great with his son, and a very doting friend to us all. Oh, and he's funny and smart and very attractive. Not to mention he's got that motorcycle…"

"Okay, I get it. He's great," Derek grumbled, having heard the same debate from Meredith just the night before. Somehow, Derek could not wrap his thick head around the fact that there was someone who had the potential to take his place at the hospital.

"Yes, Derek, Pete's an awesome guy."

"So, you guys are good friends with him, then?" Derek asked, only to receive a huff in response.

"Yes! Mark, Pete, Violet and I are so close, we make the cast of _Friends _look fake! And it's nice to see you too, by the way," Addison exclaimed sarcastically before stomping off to go talk to surgeons who actually cared that she had returned, unknowing that Derek would take this both literally and painfully. His worst fear had come true, he had been replaced like a family cutting down on junk food and switching to whole grain, natural crap.

Before he knew it, Mr. LA's McDreamy himself was standing before him, arms stretched out and a huge smile on his face.

"There's my big guy!" Pete cheered, eyes glittering. Derek's nose, still being groped upon, went up.

"What?"

"Thanks for watching him for us, Man," Pete thanked, clarifying that Derek was in fact not his big guy, but rather the child in Derek's arms was. "Come to Daddy, Lucas!" The baby squealed with happiness the moment Derek detached from him.

As Pete walked off with his perfect little son to his perfect little girlfriend to go ride on his perfect little motorcycle, Derek decided that the fight for the crown was on. He was protecting, fighting for independence, and would not stand down until this war with Pete Wilder had been settled.

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALLYGREYS

Meanwhile, while the girls rehearsed the tinny opening number of the show, the Man Pact clumped together in the back of the rehearsal space, playing a manly game of poker while keeping their integrity through bashing the show.

"I hate that stupid house. Is it possible to get pink eye from pink paint in you eye?" Sam lamented, opening his eye wider for Cooper to inspect. Sandy answered the question by licking Sam in the eye and worrying the germ-o-phobe further.

"This whole show is stupid," Cooper countered. "When I was in college, I don't recall any of the sororities being that perky."

"I'm surprised you remember college, Old Man," Alex remarked.

"Oh, that's funny, Karev. When you hit puberty, I'll tell you all about what it's like to drink alcohol and kiss girls," Cooper replied.

"Do you guys like Pete more than me?" Derek whined. No one was quite sure how he got back into the Man Pact, but they were all so fed up with the show by that point that they had decided to forgo it.

"Aww, Derek, what's the matter? Feeling so emasculated by doing this damn pink-a-palooza that you've forgotten what it feels like to have any pride?" Mark teased. "Of course, Pete's got a little head on you with the whole motorcycle thing…"

"If I hear one more word about that motorcycle, I swear…"

Owen threw in his hand of cards to the center of the men's circle and sighed.

"Not to mention the show is awfully sexist. Did anyone else read the script and see how the men are treated in this show? Everything in the musical is a walking advertisement for domestic abuse of males," Owen explained. The rest of the men murmured in agreement.

"Men, men, men!" the Chief, who just so happened to be eavesdropping, cut in. "Don't look at _Legally Blonde _as a venue for the women to take away your testosterone, but look at it as an opportunity to search inside of yourselves and find your inner-blonde."

With that far-from-wise statement, Chief walked away, but not before breaking into song. "You'll see boys, you'll see boys," the Chief sung as he sauntered back toward the stage. Sam's ears perked at the sound of the song, his brow muffling in confusion.

"Where have I heard that song before?" Sam questioned to himself while Cooper struggled to keep Sandy from wrecking the piles of poker chips he had neatly stacked.

* * *

**A/N: Hey! So, my show's over (and if you're wondering, it was _Bye Bye Birdie_, hence the Birdie puns), meaning that now I have more time to update! I hope you enjoyed this chapter, although nothing really happened. Please review and let me know what you think. Stay tuned for the theater games (which I promise will happen next chapter), Chief's odd selection of choreographer, and Derek's fruitless attempts at destroying Pete. Thanks!**

**-ILoVeWicked**


	7. Daughter of Delta Nu

**Chapter 7 – Daughter of Delta Nu**

Sydney Heron shut her phone uneasily and surveyed the group of annoyed surgeons and practice staffers. After a very heated conversation with the Chief, the perky resident had discovered that the reason for the bosses' lateness was due to a flat tire in the Chief's Jaguar. Naomi and Chief were stuck waiting for service on the highway and Chief had called Sydney to put her in charge. Sydney cringed as she recalled the tension in the Chief's voice as he barked orders at her through the bad phone connection.

_"Why, hello, Chief! I didn't know you had my number…"_

_"I don't have time to talk about how I got into your files, Sydney! Naomi and I broke down on the highway! Stupid Joe doesn't take the time to let the empty beer bottles actually fall into the dumpster…"_

_"Um, Chief…it sounds like you're right outside if by 'Joe' you mean the bartender who owns the tavern across the street."_

_"Yeah, so? I don't have time for this interrogation, Sydney, I'm waiting for services to pump the air back into my tire! Listen, I need you to handle the group while Nae Nae and I wait out here."_

_"But, Chief, whatever do I do with them all? Chances are they'll flee when they hear you're not around…with the exception of Lexie, of course…"_

_"Sydney, I could honestly care less about what you choose to do, as long as you keep them together until we can get to the hospital."_

Naomi had interjected herself into the conversation by that point and had suggested that Sydney corral the bunch into playing some theatre games to really get them working collaboratively. She began spewing popular improvisation games until Sydney picked "Freeze", to which Naomi went into a lengthy explanation and instructed Sydney to take notes over.

Sydney, who had been waiting for her big moment to come across as a Chief favorite, embraced her role as game mediator with full force once the initial wave of uncertainty had passed. Beaming, she flounced from the stage to the antsy cast and crew.

"Gang, I have an announcement! The Chief and Naomi have run into an emergency and will be a little late to rehearsal today…"

"Great," Alex exclaimed, "so we can go, right?"

"Not exactly," said Sydney, biting her lower lip to keep from bursting in excitement. "Chief wants everyone to stay in this room." A groan flew from everyone's mouths, the sound meshing together and creating one droning remark of disappointment.

"Now, now, what's with the sour faces, guys? Don't you enjoy getting to know everyone a little better? I know I am!"

"There's only so much getting to know that I can handle," Cristina muttered, bitterly watching Pete and Violet nearly go at it from the corner of her eye. Sydney's smile spread further, in an attempt to make up for everyone's pouting.

"Well, as a warm-up and cast cooperation exercise, the Chief has instructed me to play a theatre game with you all."

"Theatre game? Those exist?" Izzie questioned, her nose crinkling.

"Are those like pool games, but onstage?" Jackson Avery asked. Rose clapped her hands together wildly at the comment.

"Yay! I _love _Marco Polo!" Rose cheered.

Sydney giggled nervously, as now she had all eyes on her. "You're close Rose. Marco Polo is sure fun in the pool, but the game Naomi explained to me sounds like even more fun!"

"You mean, _funner_," Rose corrected the resident after several pops of her gum, which she swallowed after Cristina thumped her on the back of the head. Sydney shrugged.

"Sure, Rose. Now everyone get in a circle so you can see every single one of your cast mates' beautiful faces!" Slowly, but surely, the group formed a deformed oval around the Chief's "favorite" resident. Sydney took success one step at a time and proceeded to explain the game.

"So, Naomi says this game improves your improvisational skills, which were decent last year, your comedic timing, your ability to pick up a new scene, and your relationship with other cast members."

"Oh, great!" Mark complained, rolling his eyes and loosening his grip around Addison's shoulders. "At this rate, we should all just join hands and sing 'Don't Stop Believing'!"

"All aboard the Fruity Express. Ride with caution," added Charles Percy.

Sydney placed her hands on her hips and did her best to look disappointed with the egotistical surgeons. She had anticipated this reaction from prideful men such as Mark and Charles and Alex, and to that, she had the perfect antidote: killing them with kindness.

"Sounds like a good idea, Mark! If we have time, we can pull out the piano and have a jam session," Sydney answered innocently. Mark huffed and put his arm back around his ashamed fiancé.

"The game, Freeze, works a little something like this: there are two actors up in the middle of the circle, and they are given a scenario to act out by the audience. The key is to really use your physicality when you play the characters, so that members of the audience can come up with new scenes based on your body positions. That person, once the new idea comes to them, must yell "freeze!" and take on one of the actors' positions in the circle. Then that person must start an entirely different scene, and so on. Sounds exciting, right?"

"You lost me at Freeze," Dell admitted.

"This is so stupid! Isn't it, guys? We men will not take part in such an emasculating exercise, right, men?" Derek asked, scanning the circle for his fellow Pact members. Pete shrugged.

"Whatever. I think it would be kind of cool to let loose," he rationed, causing all of the women—and some men—immediately around him to suddenly want to participate.

"Sounds complicated," Meredith, on the other side of Derek and an earshot too far to hear Pete, drawled. "Can't we just have surgery scavenger hunts again or something?"

"Oooh, I loved those!" Izzie squealed. "Let's do those!"

"Wait, when you say freeze, does that include blinking?" Lexie asked, pen scribbling down instructions to the game on her pink notepad. Sydney tried to speak up to answer Lexie's question, but by that point, the entire circle had erupted in pandemonium.

Sydney roared, wads of curly hair in each of her hands. "No, no, no! Now, we're doing what the Chief told me to do with you, and your going to become closer with each other, and I'm going to be Chief's favorite resident, gosh darnit! Now somebody get in the space with me!"

What failed to occur to Sydney was that the cast was becoming closer to each other without even knowing it. By working together to distract and frazzle Sydney so that they would avoid playing the silly game--all for their selfish reasons, of course--they had become uniform in objective and had, in essence, become a conniving team of sorts. From Sydney's eyes, they were personally victimizing her.

Sydney's face gave Addison's hair a run for its money, as it grew redder by the heavy second. "Someone, now! Stand up here and freeze with—oh, hello, Chief!"

The group was relieved to see Naomi and Chief, both drenched it what everyone could only presume was rain, coming thorough the doors and shivering. At the sight of a very frustrated Sydney standing in the center of a circle of grinning doctors, Naomi elbowed the Chief and forced him to look up.

"Why aren't we freezing?" Chief asked. Sydney finally allowed her strong hands to literally rip a tuft of hair from the side of her flaming head.

"Because, Chief, no one would listen to me!" Sydney declared.

Chief pouted in understanding. He was constantly in Sydney's position. He just handled it better. Raising his focus to the cast, the Chief continued to wring the water out of his toupee and spoke calmly, levelly:

"Alrighty, no big deal. We'll just do a mirroring exercise to warm-up instead. Thank you for nothing, Doctor Heron. I appreciate your bravery in trying to get Mark Sloan to play freeze, so I excuse you from mirroring. As for the rest of you, find a partner, get your own space onstage, and face them."

"Bet you don't want to participate now that there's a man in charge, huh Pete?" Derek challenged. Pete roped his arm around Violet and grinned innocently.

"Don't have to. I need to go over lighting with Naomi. But have fun, man!" Pete replied, waltzing off, girlfriend clinging to him, and leaving Derek steamed.

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALLYGREYS

"You better work with that Arizona girl," Cooper whispered in Callie's ear as Sandy pulled him toward the door to go on a walk. Callie's face flushed red.

"What the heck do you mean by that?" she hissed. Cooper reared back and pulled Sandy to a halt.

"I mean that when I come back in here, I better see you mirroring the new blonde chick. Now, make your move, Sugar."

Callie blushed. "Friedman, if you call me Sugar ever again…"

"Defensive, blushing, denying that you like when I call you Sugar…you like her. So what are you waiting for? Go act or whatever with her! It doesn't look like anyone else is bombarding her."

Callie looked into a crowd of pre-made matches and found Arizona, hanging back in the corner with wild blue eyes that scoured the room for human interaction of any sort. Callie sighed, knowing Cooper was every bit right about her feeling an attraction to Arizona. Sure, Callie had never talked to her, but from what she had seen through spying, Arizona was smart, pretty, and open about who she was. She was everything Callie was not, but as her mother always said and made proof through the marriage she upheld with her father: opposites attract.

Before Callie could take a breath to steady herself and ask Arizona to be her partner, she was shoved in the pretty blonde woman's face by the Chief.

"Arizona, meet Callie. Callie, meet Arizona. You're both single—I mean, without a partner—so mirror, get to know each other."

Arizona flashed Callie a brief, welcoming smile that nearly took the Hispanic girl's breath away. Callie smiled in return, and the Chief smiled, feeling he had done something significant for each lonely woman.

Across the stage, Miranda found her palm inches away from Sam's. Electricity nearly bound the two hands together, but both Bailey and Sam had enough willpower (and stubborness) to withstand the force.

"So, how have you been since your trip to LA? Still coping with that divorce?" Sam asked, wanting to hit himself in the head shortly afterward. Bailey scowled at him, eyes narrowing at the remark that rang true.

"For your information, I'm moving on. I'm dating now. I'm dating _men _now. And you? Still playing Operation with patients, or did you go back to the self-help crap?" Bailey retorted.

"Still in heart surgery, if that's what you mean."

"Maybe you should come down to Seattle. Hospitals are better here, you know."

"I like sunshine and hospitals that need improvements, but thank you very much for the offer to come down to Seattle and work with you."

Bailey leaned backward, eyes wide and taken aback. Sam, to keep up with the game, mirrored Bailey's expression, much to her annoyance. "I offered because Seattle needs a new, skilled head of cardio, not because I want to bring back anything that happened in LA."

Sam chuckled to himself. "Yeah, okay."

"I'm serious!" Bailey insisted as she mirrored the circular movements of Sam's hands once they were told to switch leaders. Though her eyes were supposed to be locked with her partner's, Bailey could not remove her eyes from the strong hands that carried her body along to react like magnets.

"I know you are, and I respect and believe that. All I know is that when I got divorced, it took me a while to get over my wife, and until I did, every woman I dated up to that point didn't count."

"Really," Bailey asked cautiously, her eyes finally gluing to the chocolate brown orbs in front of her. Sam's luscious mouth made movements, and she was so focused on his words and how his lips would feel that she had forwent copying them. "No exceptions?"

Chief announced that mirroring was over and that he needed Mark and Lexie onstage. The pairs all separated and nearly shoved each other to be first offstage. Sam stepped back, causing Miranda, still in mirroring mode, to do the same.

"Well, maybe there were a few exceptions," Sam answered before following the crowd offstage.

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALLYGREYS

"Oh, Warner, tonight's just _perfect_!" Lexie gushed as Elle Woods after she and Mark got themselves situated on stage and the Chief began his blocking. Mark shook his head as he went ahead and read his lines for the first time since the read through.

"This is so gay," he grumbled under his breath.

"What was that, Doctor Sloan?" the Chief called from the end of the stage.

"No, _you're _perfect!" Mark answered, avoiding another one of last year's brawls between him and his director. The scene went on for about another page of the two cooing, "No, you are!" Everything came to a halt when Lexie's end of the makeshift dinner table (which was a gurney for the time being) fell silent.

"I—uh, I don't remember what comes next," Lexie panicked, her voice rising in pitch and volume. "How could this have happened if I have a photographic memory?"

Mark looked from the paranoid intern to his un-scored, untouched script and leaned forward.

"You _do _know it's just blocking, right? We don't have to be off book until, like, Friday," Mark explained, though he was pretty sure the teary eyed woman across from him was too preoccupied with the fact that she missed five words out of her ten billion lines to regard that he existed.

"At least Doctor Grey took the initiative to learn her lines ahead of time and proved to me why I gave her the role," the Chief stated offhandedly. "It's alright, Lexie. You're line is…"

"Okay, now even I'm irritating myself," a voice from behind the Chief called.

Chief whirled around to give the voice an identity and was shocked to find the culprit. Owen Hunt, mouth gaping and tongue lolling in surprise, stood behind the Chief, no script or any source of line prompting on or around him.

"Hunt? How did you know one of Elle's lines?" Chief asked.

"Yeah, how did you know that?" Mark asked skeptically. He had a script in his hands and he did not even know what Lexie's line was. In fact, he had thought the scene only consisted of Warner and Elle telling each other that they were perfect. Owen snapped back to life and shook his head. All over his face were signs of embarrassment and shock that amused Mark, excited the Chief, and angered Lexie.

"I…don't know. I guess during the read through everything just kind of stuck in my head. In Iraq, we had to be ready for anything, and to do that, we had to know how to do everything verbatim, exactly like it should be. I guess that's how I know everyone's lines," Owen replied, coming to terms with this newfound skill just as quickly as everyone else in the area was.

The Chief proceeded to pop quiz Owen on the lines of various characters, including ensemble members, only to watch as they were spat out by Owen in split-seconds, confirmed by Naomi as a word-for-word response. Chief whooped and pulled Owen to the edge of the stage with him.

"Oh Owen, if you weren't such a brilliant surgeon, I'd carry you around on my shoulder all day!" Chief gushed. "Naomi and I could sure use you as our right hand man to prompt our actors with lines." Owen winced at the thought of being piggybacked by Chief throughout the halls of the hospital.

"Gee, thanks, Chief."

Lexie, still stunned, whipped her head around to stare helplessly at Mark, who was doing some last minute line cramming while the Chief praised Owen.

"Can you believe him? _I'm _the one with the photographic memory!"

"Yeah, but he went to Iraq. His wins," said Mark.

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALLYGREYS

Cristina and Meredith had utilized the Chief's distraction of Owen's Iraq gift to sneak out of the room and go buy some sushi for the rest of the residents. They were nearly locked out of the room, due to the fact that Pete and Violet were using the door to lean against while they played Peek-a-Boo with their son. Meredith's conscious would have been rendered for almost killing a one year old by kicking open that door if that one year old had not been Wonderchild: Spawn of Perfection, as Cristina referred to him.

"Ugh, look at that," Cristina muttered grimly through a mouthful of sushi as she gestured toward the family repositioned against the door. Meredith rolled her eyes.

"Aww, Cristina, but they're cute," Meredith said, watching as Lucas got a field day out of his mother's vanishing face. The second Pete leaned over and kissed Violet, Meredith felt the raw fish in her stomach coming back upstream. Cristina was on hand with a brown paper bag for Meredith to breathe into.

"But the kissing has got to stop," said Meredith. "Every time they display affection, I get nauseous."

"Yeah, what's with that, anyway?" Izzie butted in as she, Alex, and George joined the Twisted Sisters at the sight of sushi. Meredith shrugged.

"I have no idea, but can you move that sushi away from me, Cristina? Just the smell of it is starting to make me gag too," Meredith complained, and on command, Cristina disposed of her lunch by throwing it in George's face.

"Are you sure it has to do with Pete and Violet? Or is it public displays of affection overall?" Alex asked. Meredith shook her head.

"Just them. You and Iz kiss in front of me all the time, and I feel nothing. They kiss, and my stomach flips out. And they're always around me, too! I swear, if I have appendicitis again…"

"Pretty sure you can only have that once, Mere," George retorted as he picked seaweed out of his hair.

The gang watched as Violet and Pete kissed yet again, and Meredith heaved into the brown bag. She placed the refilled bag of sushi in Cristina's lap, and she plucked Meredith's bag of vomit carefully between her forefinger and thumb. Cristina rocketed upward, pulling an uneasy Meredith with her.

"That's it! Were getting the love to stop now! Damn that happy family!" Cristina screeched through what little nasal space she was not pinching. The group scurried to keep up with Cristina's pace and followed her to gang up at the door.

"Wilder, Turner," Cristina addressed to get their attention. "A word?"

"Of course, Cristina!" Violet greeted. "What's up?"

"Oh, we'll tell you what's up: You need to get a room, that's what's up!" Alex ordered. Violet and Pete blinked at them listelessly. George cleared his throat and added:

"You're, um, making Meredith throw up…"

"Yeah, whenever you two show affection I puke," Meredith admitted, humiliated that her friends were taking the initiative to solve her problems in such an aggressive way when a bottle of Pepto Bismol would have been just fine.

"Not only that, but you guys are this perfect little family and…don't you ever show any other emotion besides happy? Doesn't she ever bug you? Why is your baby so perfect for a mistake?" Izzie lamented. Pete, feathers ruffled at the sudden accusations, patted his girlfriend's knee and rocketed upward.

"No, I don't ever get sick of my family, and if I'm happy, why shouldn't I show it? If I love my girlfriend and my son, why should we sneak around corners and pretend like our relationship is non-existent? For us, life sucked up until we all came together as a little family, and we're finally happy! That's how we show our emotions in California, you know, openly. But you people are too wrapped up in your rain and your self-pity to celebrate love when you've got it!"

He grabbed Violet, planted a long kiss on her lips, and ended his rant with, "C'mon, Violet! Let's go have sex in one of their on-call rooms!"

Violet, clearly mortified, picked up the baby and handed him to George before running off with Pete.

"I think that's the most I've ever heard him talk," Izzie stated while Meredith vomited in the trashcan nearby. "It's so..._hot_!"

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALLYGREYS

The Chief and Naomi, while waiting for the tire to be revived in the Chief's car, were able to chat even more about the show. They both decided that since the last year's time crunching rehearsals prohibited big, flashy dance numbers, they would be more proactive this time.

The Chief explained this to the cast once blocking 'Serious' had come to an end. "Since 'Whipped Into Shape' is arguably the best number in the show because of it's fast-paced, jump rope induced choreography, I would like to get a head start on this difficult number now, meaning I'm going to need a choreographer.

"To teach this dance, I am going to need someone fierce, motivated, skilled, and trustworthy to, well, whip the dancers into shape. I want this number to be flawless, the most memorable part of the show, and the choreographer can make that memory happen."

Miranda's chest puffed out with pride and her eyes glittered with no modesty whatsoever. The Chief really didn't have to make his choice of her as the choreographer so obvious. He could give the others some hope. Not only had he described her to a tee, but she knew she could handle the responsibility of toning Meredith and the rest of the dancers. After all, if she could do it in surgery, she could do it onstage.

"So, it is with great pride that I give you our _Legally Blonde _choreographer…Charlotte King!"

Miranda flung herself forward and into the Chief's arms. "Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, Chief! It's such an honor to be—Charlotte?!"

"Of course, Miranda, who else? Charlotte is exactly what we need to give 'Whipped into Shape' its full potential. Isn't that right, my little Southern Belle?"

"Whatever. Gimme the dancers and some jump ropes," Charlotte said, the most sincere thank you the Chief would get from her. "Let's go, you lazy lumps with scalpels!" Charlotte barked, sending the 'Whipped' ensemble flocking to her like ducklings out into the hall.

Miranda fought the urge to grab a jump rope and hang herself with it as the Chief walked off humming the tune to the song that she could have given just as much magic to as Charlotte King would.

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALLYGREYS

Meredith had just gotten done finishing her business from lunch in the women's restroom after Charlotte's intense physical torture when she spotted Derek sitting against the wall, head buried in his hands.

"Hey, what are you doing out here?" Meredith questioned as she joined him on the floor. Derek's head jerked up and at the sight of Meredith, his tensions melted away. He shrugged.

"I don't know. I'm just thinking, I guess."

Meredith reached up to caress his hairline and smiled. "Well, don't think too hard. I think I can smell your head burning, and goodness knows what will happen if all that product in your hair catches flame."

"I bet _Pete _doesn't think too hard," Derek grumbled, head back to its original burrow in his cold hands. Meredith pursed her lips into a confused pout.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Like you don't know," Derek sniffled. "You've done practically everything to get that man's attention besides kill Violet. And it's not just you, it's everyone. It feels like…oh, it's stupid."

"I'm your fiancé, anything you say to me is valid and educated, so don't try to retract the statement now."

"It just feels like he's taking over my domain…you know…as McDreamy."

Meredith then burst into hysterical laughter that Derek, try as he may, could not understand. He supposed the maniacal cackling came with the Dark and Twisty package. Once Meredith had wiped the tears from her eyes, she took Derek's hand and gave it a light squeeze, leading him away from his stupor.

"Derek, first of all, I don't know if you're aware, but Pete makes me throw up. Literally, he makes me upchuck."

"What?"

"I don't know, I guess I have a winter bug or something, but whenever he and Violet kiss or hold hands or play with their baby…I puke. You, you don't do that. Sure, my stomach feels uneasy when I see you, but that's just the butterflies I always get when I'm around you, because I love you so much."

Derek made no effort in masking his conceit, as his bruised ego had been patched back up by the only person who could make that task possible. Testing his luck and fueling his fire, Derek grabbed Meredith by each side of her face and pulled her into an embrace. When they pulled apart and she did not look sick in the slightest, Derek grinned.

"So you really think I'm the McDreamiest?"

"Oh, Honey, there's no competition. Pete is just something to admire, you know, a far, distant, unattainable ideal. But I've already won my prize, Derek. Don't ever let my uncontrollable feelings toward any man change that."

"I love you, Meredith," Derek said into another kiss he and his prize-holder shared. "And I'm glad that Witch Doctoring, motorcycle driving bozo makes you queasy."

He was then greeted with the all too familiar feeling of Meredith's red-hot palm across his face. Where the forceful slap came from, he had no idea. Derek looked up at his fiancé with wide, unsure eyes.

"Don't you _ever _insult Pete again! He's a good guy, and he proved that to me today when he stuck up for his love! Do I see you sticking up for our love! No, you're hiding out by the bathrooms! Gosh, Derek, grow up!" Meredith cried before storming off and leaving Derek dumfounded.

Whatever this strange bug Meredith has is, Derek thought as his hand flew to his throbbing cheek, she better get over it fast.

* * *

A/N: Whoo, that chapter was a doozy! Sorry if it was a lot to digest...so many storylines, so little Legally Blonde song titles. But I hope you enjoyed everything. Like I said, my show is over and school has already begun to wind down, so updates should be speedier (granted I just don't get lazy) so be on the lookout for new installments. Thanks again!

-ILoVeWicked

PS - Anyone play Freeze before? Best theatre game ever.


	8. Blood In the Water

**Chapter 8 – Blood In the Water**

With a cheeky grin and a tip of his beret, the Chief greeted Lexie and a very drowsy Mark for their early call to polish up the blocking to the 'Serious' scene. Drifting in a few moments later were Naomi and Owen, who had wished he had kept his abilities a secret for the sake of three more hours of sleep. It was obvious that neither Mark nor Owen wanted to be at rehearsal so early in the morning, but the Chief was too wrapped up in the prosperities of this year's show compared to the last—thanks to his assistant director—to care that even he was up before the sun rose.

"Good morning!" Chief sang as Naomi placed a coffee, brewed to excellence, in his groping hand. Licking his thumb, the Chief began leafing through his script. "Let's finish this puppy up, shall we? Where did we leave off yesterday?"

After a long yawn, Owen replied, "Elle, I want you to know how happy you've made me. I mean, every guy dreams of finding a girl who looks like you."

"Thank you, Hunt. Now Mark, I really want you to punch out _looks like you_, because you're showing the audience how much you don't care…Mark!"

Wiping the drool from the corner of his lip, Mark's head flew up from its position nested in his arms, caught red-handed in the act of dozing off. "What? I'm up! I care!" Mark shouted in alarm.

Lexie giggled as she watched Mark's pitiful attempts at pumping enthusiasm into his body in order to wipe the scowl from the Chief's face. The corner of his mouth still glistened with the evidence of sweet dreaming, but Lexie chose not to tell Mark. The spit brought out his dimples as he smiled fakely toward Naomi. His cleverly modeled hair rose and fell with his concentrated eyebrows as he blinked away the circles under his eyes that covered up his chiseled cheekbones. Lexie's eyes locked a little lower to target Mark's luscious lips, twitching to life and causing his five o'clock shadow to catch in the dim light of morning that peeked through the blinds. He was really quite attractive, Lexie noticed. How had she not seen those features in his face when Mark still worked in Seattle?

"Now that I have everyone's attention, let's skip through the song right now and go right to Warner breaking up with Elle," Chief explained. "Lexie, I want you to think about every man that has ever dumped you, especially the twenty from this hospital, and pile them up into one Super Break-Up…drive that emotion hard. Got it? Go!"

Lexie snapped into that mindset and choked on the emotion (even though the Chief _had_ exaggerated when he overestimated how many men had dumped her) like a dog waiting under the master's dinner table for a scrap of good food. Resuming the position Chief had blocked them in before the dialogue continued, Mark's strong, comfortable arm draped casually around Lexie's scrawny shoulders while she burrowed her head in his rippled chest, Lexie allowed her eyes to grow wide.

"What? You're breaking up with me? But I thought you were…proposing!" Lexie cried, receiving a delayed reaction from Mark, who had forgotten that they were acting.

Warner's line was too late by that point, as Lexie had teetered off balance due to her character's shock and she had started freefalling to the ground. Lexie fought the urge to scream as she plummeted downward. Eyes shut tightly to avoid watching the fall play out, the younger Grey sister awaited the concussion that was coming her way, only to be surprised when it never came. Assuming that she had already been whacked from consciousness, Lexie slowly allowed her eyes to open only to be greeted with the ground inches from her hovering face. Looking up to her savior, Lexie's heart rate soared when she caught sight of Mark's face, twisted with concern.

"You okay, Lexie?" he asked. Lexie gulped and tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear.

"Uhm, yeah…I think so. Thanks for saving me from that nasty fall. I can't move three inches without tripping over my own feet," she assured him quietly as he hoisted her up to her feet effortlessly without so much as one complaint to her clumsiness. Mark smiled nervously.

"It's the least I can do for letting you fall," he retaliated, nearly killing her with his kindness. Lexie was floored. Was this the same Mark Sloan everyone claimed to be a smug, arrogant jerk, because she could not see any signs of man-whore-ness in his gentle eyes or his guiding hands that led her back to her seat at the gurney/table.

The Chief, however, did not seem to find Mark rude or gentle. Lexie was unaware of the grudge held between the Chief and Mark over a pair of penny loafers and was confused as to why the Chief was so infuriated with Mark's attempt at saving Lexie and the scene. Throwing his hands in the air and nearly showering Naomi and Owen with his cappuccino, the Chief revealed his most unattractive side to everyone in the room as he blew up at Mark Sloan.

"What the hell was that?" the Chief asked. "It's a simple line, Mark; even I know what you're supposed to say. You're next line is…Owen, help me out."

"I, um, did talk to my parents about that, Poohbear, but…then Lexie squeals or something like that," Owen answered. He seemed to be the only one following the right cues that morning, for which Naomi gave him a pat on the back for.

"Sorry, Chief, it's not the lines or the fact that I had to sneak out of the hotel room so early in the morning that I put on two different shoes…I just couldn't react to what Lexie was saying."

"Did you not just hear the direction I gave Lexie?"

"Well, yeah."

"She was doing everything I asked her to."

"And she's doing a great job at it!" Mark exclaimed, causing Lexie's face to flash shades of red unknown in the color spectrum. "I just feel like Elle's not supposed to be trying to win me back."

"Enlighten me, Sloan."

"What I mean is, yes, she needs tactics…but I feel like they shouldn't be so defined. Elle is so innocent. The only thing she knows how to do when she hits an obstacle is cry about it until she guilts everyone into giving her what she wants without even knowing it. She doesn't need a motivation here…because she's so shocked that everything she feels comes spewing out. You get what I mean? The scene just has to be more organic…"

As he spoke, Lexie allowed her thoughts to drift into auspicious scenarios. Not only was Mark strong, caring, and drop-dead gorgeous, but he was smart and passionate. When he spoke, about acting, of all things, he made Lexie want to melt into words, just so they could flow from the brain and mouth of Mark. What was Mark doing playing Malibu Barbie with the Oceansiders out in Los Angeles, Lexie wondered, when he could be sitting and reciting poetry in New York, or speaking to the White House as president, or better yet, in Seattle, reading the children she bore him a bedtime story.

"I—I like it!" Lexie spewed suddenly. Naomi, still stunned over the fact that Mark could actually analyze a script when he got to it, blinked at the young surgeon in confusion.

"Huh?"

"Mark's idea…about me not having any motivation and just letting Elle Woods be Elle Woods…I like it and I think we should try it," Lexie said, asserting her place as the lead of this musical with a voice still shaking with the repercussions of the power in her thoughts.

Was she really falling head over heels for Mark Sloan, a man whom she, back when he still resided in the same hospital as her, vowed to herself would never be allowed to screw her over like the sob stories of the nurses gave evidence of?

Chief was hesitant, but he took a moment to soak in the encouragement of Lexie's words before he reluctantly agreed to allow Mark's idea to take flight. Once the rest of the scene unfolded, Chief was wiping buckets of tears from his eyes.

"Such insightfully brilliant acting should be shared with the world!" he cheered up to Heaven. "_Legally Blonde_ has found its mojo, thanks to Mark Sloan, of all people! Oh, Nae Nae, I've become so inspired I nearly convulsed and died! When does the rest of the cast arrive?"

Naomi checked her watch. "Not for another hour in a half, Chief."

Chief was disheartened that he could not share this discovery with anyone else in such a long time, but he decided he would do whatever it took to keep the ball rolling. "Let's start from the very top, shall we?"

Lexie peered down at the Chief's script and _she _nearly convulsed and died. "But, Chief…it says in the script that Warner and Elle…"

"Kiss? Oh, I know, but let's just get the awkward tension out of the way now before show time, since you two aren't so familiar with each other. Remember, thespians, keep it au naturale…"

Lexie was more than eager, so much so that she failed to notice the discontent in Mark's features as his lips crushed against hers, a tightly sealed-off void that Lexie's tongue begged to know the code to.

It was difficult for Mark to hold his body so close to another woman's. Lexie practically begged for him to throw her on that gurney, but Mark kept his big mouth shut for once. The feeling of another woman's lips was strange to him, and it brought about the nostalgic feeling of longing for the kisses he shared only with the likes of Addison.

It was hard for him to stay so loyal to his fiancé, not because Lexie was at all tempting to him, but due to the fact that the Chief was screaming, "Acting, you're acting? Kiss each other! Kiss, I say!"

Chief was satisfied when Mark's lips parted and all Hell broke loose in between the two mouths. Mark's hands found their way to Lexie's hips and Lexie's arms flung around Mark's broad shoulders, reaching on her tippy toes to get a better feel for his kiss.

"There you go! Now, you look like a couple."

Lexie was sent reeling when Mark, just as eager as she had been to kiss him, broke from their embrace. Mark made no effort to hide his sleeve scrubbing away at his lips while Lexie turned to stare up out into the rising sun. Why, that kiss surely meant that Mark only felt the same way about her. Something so endearing wouldn't have blossomed on the first try of there was no underlying emotions.

People had begun to filter into the rehearsal space, and Mark was just grateful that no one had to witness what had just happened, especially Addison. The redhead stared questioningly at him, as if she knew troubles were underway.

Mark patted Little Grey's head and cleared his throat. Feeling like he had just violated a twelve-year-old, Mark mused that the Chief had been right about awkward tension between him and the girl scout, he was just wrong about when it came. Lexie was suddenly peering up at him, the strangest look shimmering in her puppy dog eyes. He supposed she was expecting some kind of compliment on her sloppy kissing.

"Good job…Champ," Mark told Lexie hesitantly before b-lining toward Addison to give her a sincere kiss that would have left Elle Woods dead.

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALLYGREYS

"Derek Shepherd, you are the hottest, coolest, dreamiest guy in the whole show!"

"Why thank you, Naomi. You're very pretty, too," Derek replied, admiring her gumption to be so bold and forward to him in front of everyone, when he knew she had felt this way about him since their medical school days. Naomi's eyes went wide.

"Um, I was just giving you an idea of how every girl feels about your character by what the Chief wrote down…but thank you for the compliment. Chief and I want you to give off your craziest, sexiest vibes when you walk onstage and woo Miranda with that package of yours…" She saw more gracelessness lurking as Derek's eyes began falling southward.

"…And by that I mean the package in your hands…not to be misconstrued with…you get it. Just go get into costume. I need everyone in 'Bend and Snap' to be onstage and ready!"

Miranda helped Sam heave the salon that took him twenty-four hours to complete the day before onstage for the scene that the Chief 'simply needed to block', since 'Whipped into Shape' was going so well by being ahead of schedule.

"I hate acting. Doesn't the Chief get that we're doctors and we don't act?"

"I'm sure you have some serious chops hidden in that tough girl demeanor of yours…I mean, I had no idea Naomi was into theater. That information is just as new to me as it is to everyone," Sam said bitterly.

Miranda continued to guide the set piece onstage as she watched Sam's face twitch with agony. "It upset you that she never told you about that, didn't it?"

"She's my ex-wife. We have a child and an upcoming grandchild together. She knows every single detail about my life, and yet she felt the need to hide her theater dreams from me? I would have cracked out the _Annie _tunes a long time ago if she had just said something."

"You said she knows _everything_?"

"Yes, she does."

"You mean to tell me that you, a small ration of the obnoxious species we women are forced to call husbands, have never kept a secret from your wife?"

"Nope."

"So you told her about me?"

Sam stopped pushing and watched as Miranda continued trying to pull the salon on her own after such a casual comment. "That's…different."

"You haven't told her, it's a secret," Miranda explained calmly before the Chief shooed Sam offstage.

Bailey watched as Sam stalked off into the darkness of the wings and sighed. She wished she would stop coming off so harsh to him, or at least wished he could see that her toughness was only a defense mechanism to get her through a conversation between the two of them without her grabbing him and kissing him all over.

She admired Sam, for keeping all but the tiny detail of his Seattle flame out in the open with his ex-wife. How Miranda wished she and Tucker were half as civil as Naomi and Sam acted around each other. She knew more than anyone that the glue that bound strong exes like Sam and Naomi together was their daughter. In cases like the estrangement she and Tuck shared, their child was the one thing that kept Tucker from breaking out a lawyer and legally destroying her. Sam was an honorable man.

"Let's get going on this scene!" the Chief hollered. "Miranda, start us off!"

Just noticing for the first time that Lexie had been seated across from her, waggling her fingers in the resident's face for a good five minutes, Miranda snapped into character and buried her nose in her script.

"There you go! Now, you're ready for your big trial! Are you sure you don't want me to paint little gavels on your nails?"

Lexie giggled and tossed her hair over her shoulder. "That's okay, Paulette. That may be a little too much."

"Alright. Classy lawyer pink it is! Oh, when those jury people see your nails, they'll know they can trust you!"

"Which is more than what my team is doing! They're all hounding me for Brooke's alibi!"

"Including your friend Emmett?"

Thinking of Emmett and keeping on the topic of honorable, good men, Miranda couldn't help but note the chemistry that was constantly in the air whenever George and Lexie were with each other. Just an hour earlier, they had gone over a scene and ran lines together, and everyone was already chattering about how adorable they appeared. George always seemed to be going out of his way to make Lexie comfortable about being his significant other onstage, and Lexie never failed to look flattered. Lexie laughed airily and said her next line.

But Miranda was no longer paying attention to the situation between Elle and Emmett and Lexie and George. Her thoughts were disrupted with the sound of Charlotte barking at the 'Whipped into Shape' cult out in the hall. Still steamed over her loss at the role of choreographer, Bailey resisted going out into the hall and clawing out that blonde, skinny devil's brassy vocal chords.

"Miranda…your line? Shall I grab Owen?" Chief chastised. Miranda shook her head.

"No, it's just a little loud out in the hall, that's all. Do you think we could quiet Charlotte down or relocate the group to another city or something?" Miranda replied, only to receive little response from the Chief.

"Keep with the scene, no matter what the distraction is, Miranda. I thought you could manage that."

It was a little hard for Miranda to do when all she could think about is how Charlotte would have been a nasty component to the Civil War's southern efforts, had she been alive then. "I'm sorry, Chief. What were you saying, Elle?"

"I said, Emmett's on the team too."

"In more ways than one…" Miranda could hardly hear her own voice dropping, Charlotte's shouts were so loud.

"You call that dancin'? Back where I come from, you'd hardly be allowed to the County Fair with those two left feet you're sportin', Percy. I wanna see you jump harder, faster, until your jump rope is sweatin'!"

"Are you kidding me? Chief, I can't even hear myself think! You're not going to do anything about this?"

The Chief did not even look up at Miranda as he commented, "Charlotte's just doing her job, which is more than I can say for you. Keep with the scene!"

Miranda was aware that she was overreacting. Simply put, she was pissed about the Chief favoring Charlotte, a complete stranger who harbored no human emotions whatsoever, over her. The memories of late night surgery viewings, personal lessons, and scrubbing in with the Chief back in her interning years were nearly evaporated among the condensed thoughts that evaded her brain now, and even though she knew it was a long shot that Charlotte would move to Seattle and become the Chief's new prodigy, she had every intention of reminding the Chief that she, Miranda Bailey, was still that same fiery, memorable surgeon she had been when Chief first absorbed her name.

Rocketing upward, Miranda sent her chair backwards and nearly crushed Sam's masterpiece. She hastily cleared her throat when the Chief still refused to give her any attention whatsoever. Charlotte's remarks to the jump ropers outside rang loudly and painfully in her ears, prevailing over the steady thumping of her heart.

She spoke with more confidence than she felt when the Chief finally looked up. "I've had it! I can't work with the sounds of forced labor dragging me out of character! Chief, I'm taking the day off. Not that you'd care, you'd probably be able to replace me anyway. Good luck trying to continue the scene without me."

She stormed from the room without having to hear what the Chief had to say. Chief, mouth anchoring his body into what looked like a permanent slouch, needed Naomi to lightly slap him on the cheek before he regained life.

"Did Miranda Bailey just diva out on me?" the Chief asked, fairly certain that he had just hallucinated. Bailey was not one of the average, run of the mill, whiny interns, or residents for that matter. She was Miranda Bailey: strong, confident, and taking no prisoners. He supposed that was why he gave her such a rough time, because he assumed she would endure it without complaint.

Naomi walked up to him and shrugged. "Yes, Richard. And we really need to get this scene taken care of, but without Paulette, there's no 'Bend' or 'Snap'."

"Damn. To think I forwent giving Bailey an understudy because I trusted her," the Chief stated, clearly still not broken from his daze. He had to find an understudy for Bailey quickly if they were going to get through the day. All of the girls in the cast were busy with their own roles, Charlotte was working on 'Whipped', and Naomi needed to be with him offstage to record the blocking. Who could he use?

Violet picked the absolute worst moment to step out onstage and ask if the Chief had any more pink fabric. Light bulb practically sprouting from the Chief's head at the sight of the frazzled brunette, the Chief leaned in toward Naomi.

"Hey, Nae Nae, is Violet any good at acting?"

"Not at all, Sir."

"Eh, she's all we've got. Hey, Doctor Turner!" Chief yelled, starling the already jumpy woman and nearly causing what little pink fabric she had left to fall from her arms. " What do you say to playing a salon owner for a few hours while Doctor Bailey calms down?"

Violet crinkled her nose in disgust. "I'd say no, but from the looks Naomi's giving me behind your back, it looks like I don't have a choice."

"You know, you're smarter than I took you for," Chief mused. "Now, drop that fabric and come join us where all the _real _magic happens." Violet bit her lip and shrunk back, as if stepping onto the stage would trigger all sorts of booby traps.

"I don't know, Doctor Webber—I mean, Chief—sir…I have some stagefright issues. Don't you think Naomi could step in for the role?"

"Naomi needs to help me block this scene."

"Sir, you are not understanding what I'm trying to say: I'm a _horrible _actor. Sure, I've never actually had a script in front of me…but I'm positive that if I were given a script, I'd be awful at reading it."

"I think you're underestimating yourself, right, Nae Nae?"

Naomi shook her head and chewed on her chocolate to form a diversion from the painful truth. "No, I think she means every word she says. Just ask her why she's so damn truthful…the woman can't tell a lie to save her life. If she can't lie, how can she act?"

"You would know all about lies, wouldn't you, Naomi?" Sam called from offstage.

The Chief would hear no more of this back-and-forth stalling nonsense going on between the Oceanside clan and simply pointed at Paulette's chair, no longer vacated. Violet, with a very obvious sigh, obeyed to the Chief's demand reluctantly. Lexie slid her script over to the unfamiliar costume woman, who took her good old time to locate her glasses and find her place in the scene.

"Oh, I've seen the way he looks at you," Violet read with a monotone voice filled with enough misplaced emotion to put the audience to sleep. The Chief was about to call cut and demand Violet try, but when he saw the forced look on the stand-in's face, he realized that she was all he had at the moment, and that she was truly giving it her all. He should not waste his breath trying to correct someone who already knew and accepted that they were not meant for the stage.

"Paulette!" Lexie squealed, her talent like daytime compared to Violet's nighttime. "He's…he's just my friend."

"Right…well, I wish I had a friend like that."

Derek then entered the scene, legs widespread in a stance that screamed overconfidence. Without the knowledge of the Chief or Violet, Derek had secretly sent his costume out to his mother to have it sewn together to fit just right. The gesture seemed to have paid off, as Derek's entrance had finally gotten a reaction out of Violet.

"I've got a package," Derek declared proudly, "for Miss Paulette Bonafonte."

"Yes…you…do…" Violet panted. Catching herself before she lost control, Violet removed her eyes from Derek's remarkably tailored outfit and turned back to her script and followed the stage direction, sticking her arm erectly into the air.

Derek Shepherd may have not been the brightest, as far as common sense was concerned, but he knew enough to spot a crush when he saw one. As Derek sauntered toward the pair of ladies, there was no denying that he had caught the eye of the heavily protected therapist from the sunny side of the west coast.

He stopped before the salon table, and for a moment, Derek's eyes flickered above Lexie's head where Pete had caught the attention of the scene in the middle of setting up the spotlight backstage. The protective glint in Pete's eye was almost painstakingly obvious as Violet's lust. Derek was suddenly stricken with a new idea and a perfect opportunity to crush the domain stealer once and for all. Without so much as a single thought to the horrible results of what would come of his experiment, Derek acted in the heat of the moment.

Derek dropped his cardboard box and replaced it with Violet's body, planting a long, over-dramatic kiss on her lips. "Do me a favor: have yourself a super day…"

In the span of ten seconds, Derek was on the floor with a nosebleed, Pete was shaking out his unclenched fist, Lexie had dodged out of the way and ran offstage, a very flustered Violet was nearly flung into Sam's set piece, and the Chief was standing center stage, breaking up the fight that had just ensued.

"Stop this madness!" Chief bellowed, and all chaos ceased. "You are grown men, gosh darnit! So why do I have to break up the two of you after fighting over a girl, like little school boys?"

The apologies were soft and short, but they flew between the staggered breath of both men. Chief glowered at his basket cases of the hour and jabbed a thumb over his shoulder to indicate Violet's gasping body.

"Don't apologize to me, apologize to Violet."

"I'm so sorry, Miss Turner. I was so enveloped in my character, and well, if every Paulette was as pretty as you, I don't know how any UPS guy would be able to resist _not _kissing her," Derek apologized flimsily, getting the first chance at repentance. Violet blinked at him and smiled softly.

"That wasn't in the script, so I'm very confused by your action, but that kiss was…flattering, to say the least," Violet replied softly. "It's…it's strangely alright."

"Vi…" Pete began, only to be greeted with the unfamiliar feeling of hatred as his girlfriend stormed up to him and almost slapped him across the face before retracting her hand. Violet's cheeks flushed with a new form of red, the deep crimson color of infuriation.

"And you? What's your excuse? That's right…you don't have one, do you, because what went on onstage was none of your business!"

"None of my business? Violet, you're practically my wife, and you're taking the side of the stranger who _kissed _you out of nowhere? It's every bit of my business when I see some pompous brain surgeon going after my woman!"

"I'm not that pompous..." Derek grumbled through bleeding sinuses.

"Well, maybe we need to rethink just how much of 'your woman' I am," Violet said softly, intensely, nearly jamming a battering ran into Pete's stomach.

"What?"

"I'm saying you and I are done, over with. You need to learn how to act like a grown up and actually present yourself as a good influence to our son, you know, _without_ having to punch people randomly in the face for no reason to show off how macho you are…"

"He was _kissing _you and it _wasn't _in the script…"

"So? At least he was mature enough to apologize!" Violet exclaimed, even surprising herself with her irrational sway towards Team McDreamy. "Get your act together, Pete. Now's the perfect time for it, considering we're stuck at theater camp."

She turned to the Chief, a teary sheen covering her blue eyes that indicated how hurtful it was to do such a thing and break up with the man she loved. "I told you I was a horrible actor!" she screeched before storming offstage to sob her heart out in the nearest closet.

Derek, realizing that his dirty work had taken a more dramatic turn than he had planned, refused to look the heartbroken Pete in the eye as he started to inch offstage. He too was greeted with tough love from Meredith, who had been a spectator to the whole fiasco. Meredith lacked half the conscious Violet had, however, and went through with the slapping of Derek across his reddened face and retriggering the blood from his nose.

"How could you do such a thing?" Meredith cried. Derek hung his head in shame. His infidelities involving Rose had put him in the doghouse throughout the entire run of _Wicked _the previous year, and he was fairly certain his actions would place him back in those heavy chains of guilt.

But Meredith threw him for a curveball, which was her usual way of advancing their relationship. Nowhere did she mention that she was angry or jealous of the kiss with Violet in the slightest.

"You could have seriously hurt Pete!" Meredith squawked. "That hand works magic--he gave us all free head massages the other day and _wow_--and he could have ruined it by punching your rock solid jaw bone! Way to go, Derek! You nearly destroyed the show!"

Chief called for a five minute break, leaving everyone but Derek onstage. The Dreamy surgeon sighed. He had indirectly lost to Pete once again, left only with a broken nose, the remnants of a heavily supported couple, and split pants.

* * *

**A/N: So...those two sections weren't actually supposed to be that long...but they were plot advancing, so I'll give them that. Sorry if it's a Derek, Pete, Violet, and Chief overload, but their storylines happened to take place before others. Trust me, everyone gets their turn at the spotlight. Hope you enjoyed this chapter, please review! Up next: George and Dell form a club of their own and Rose strikes again. **

**-ILoVeWicked**

**PS- For anyone who's a total spolier reader like myself, anyone else feel like it's Violet who's dying in the PrP SF? That's just what I got from this past episode.**


	9. Ireland, Part One

**Chapter 9 – Ireland, Part 1**

_What you want, Warner, what you want is me!  
__But you need to see me in a brand new domain  
__Yes, it's plain, Warner, in a different setting  
__You will see you're getting all of this…plus a brain!_

"Harvard, what you want is right in front of you!" Dell Parker sang along to Lexie's tinny voice as his pencil tapped along to the acoustic beats emitting from the piano.

Filling out applications to medical schools, especially the elite UCLA, was something Dell would have never been able to get around to back at home. He had a daughter to parent by himself and a stable job as a midwife to uphold. He had always wanted to further expand his medical knowledge, he just feared he was not good enough to try and become a surgeon, covering it up with the fact that he did not have time to print out a document and write about himself.

As he sat on his perch behind the curtains, heaving and pulling at the heavy ropes when commanded to, Dell had more than all the time in the world on his hands to survey his options. Much to everyone else in the practice's disagreement, Dell was grateful for the expensive trip to Seattle. Lingering the bustling halls of Seattle Grace between breaks and sitting in the gallery to watch hauntingly beautiful procedures, Dell could finally understand what the world of scalpels was all about. Much to his surprise, Dell regretted having not taken the plunge sooner. Surgery couldn't possibly be that difficult if some of the best surgeons in the country were pulling off a musical with their spare time.

"UCLA, huh?" a soft voice asked from over Dell's shoulder, catching him in the act of singing along and crossing over to what Cooper claimed was "the dark side". Dell quickly folded up his application, careful not to smudge the heavy lead marks he made with his dulled pencil, and stuffed it in his shirt pocket before twirling around.

He had expected a stranger to be behind him. That was a given, considering he knew the voices of Oceanside well enough to identify them in his sleep. Never did Dell expect to come face to face with Seattle Grace's version of himself, George O' Malley.

From the moment Dell had walked into the vast hospital's conference room, he had longed to be a part of the gang of stone-faced northerners, but he knew that his profession would hold him back. Dell had always figured George was too busy with his macho surgeon friends to even give a measly midwife like him the time of day, but there George stood, a foot from Dell's position by the curtain, in all his five foot four glory.

"Um, yeah," Dell's voice bravely spoke, breaking the ice. "It's my top choice for medical school."

"Do you have any idea what you want your specialty to be?" George asked, genuine interest rooted in his question as he found a spare box lying around to sit on.

"Neonatology," Dell answered swiftly, cheeks growing red with embarrassment shortly after. He was thankful for the darkened crevice of his little corner backstage, the lightless area only allowing Dell to make out half of George's face.

"That's cool. I would have gone into that myself, but everyone thought…never give into peer pressure is the lesson I learned there," George admitted—his tone was strangely belittling—sparking the little flame Dell always carried around with him inside the closeted darkness of his head.

What George did not know was that Dell was not a child. He had witnessed peer pressure, he had initiated peer pressure, and he had received some of the biggest blows peer pressure had to offer. George O' Malley spoke to Dell as if he were a child, like everyone else in the world that refused to see past the "Surfer Boy" charm, but George's idea of hardships could not hold a candle to what Dell had seen throughout his short lifetime. Yes, he was the younger of the two, but that did not automatically make George the wiser.

As much as he wanted to hit the cocky surgeon or rip his application to shreds, Dell refrained from getting angry and decided to give George another chance. After all, he had been the one person to make an effort to strike up a conversation with him since his plane sped into the terminal.

"That stinks. Addison's a pretty great teacher; you would have learned a lot from her," Dell replied. George nodded, a bobbing shadow in the dim light of the backstage, and sighed.

"I guess you're wondering why I'm _really _here…" George began.

"There's a reason?" Dell asked. "I thought you just got lost or something…"

"No, no, there's a reason. Trust me," George assured him. Clearing his throat, the awkward little surgeon reached into his back pocket and retrieved a small, crumbled napkin with scribbled ink reading from edge to edge.

"In case you haven't noticed, I'm not exactly the manliest around here. There's Derek, Alex, Owen, and even some of the Mercy Westers can get easier lays than I can," George explained sadly after a series of failed attempts at trying to read right from the napkin, as if squinting would suddenly brighten the room.

Dell shrugged. "I can't say I relate—there's a reason I don't come into the office shirtless anymore, just ask any of the ladies—but don't you think that it's better to have people respect you for who you are on the inside rather than basing their assumptions off of your physical appearance?"

George shook his head. "Normally, I'd agree with you, but at Seattle Grace, sexiness is a cult."

When Dell blinked unresponsively, George sighed. "What I'm trying to say is: this stupid musical got me kicked out of the Man Pact, and…"

"The Man Pact?"

"It's an exclusive club for all you hot guys in the show. I thought you were in it. Sam and Pete and Cooper have been members since, like, forever."

"Nobody ever asked me to join…"

"Oh, sorry, dude. That kind of ruins what I was going for with this whole conversation, then."

"Huh?"

"I was going to ask you to talk your way into letting me back into the Man Pact. Since Derek got back in so easily because of Mark, I thought you could help me out. You know, we're both underdogs who don't get enough credit for our character because there are too many more attractive men around."

Dell cocked his head, not quite understanding George's conflicting objectives. "Well, if you agree that what is within is what truly matters, why are you so determined to get back into this pact?"

"Because it will up my self-esteem!"

"Yes, and it has done wonders for Pete and Derek, a la yesterday's brawl over Violet. Not to mention how Cooper goes around sulking because he won't man up and talk to Charlotte and Owen's painful secret of memorizing the entire script…if you ask me, that club does nothing but defeat the purpose of manlihood."

Now it was George's turn to be taken aback by this newcomer. It was suddenly obvious that Dell had been around the block more than George had originally given him credit for. Such an insightful man should have been an attending by this point. All of the sudden, George was struck with a brand new idea.

"Let's make a club of our own!" George exclaimed as he jumped from his seat and began pacing around, mentally listing new club ideas in his head.

"A club of our own?" Dell asked, eyebrows gone sky high. George nodded emphatically, adding in a few fist pumps here and there as he spewed ideas aloud.

"I mean, you and I are both kind, smart, young bachelors and we deserve to be treated as such. Sure, I'm not the prettiest thing to look at…"

"I like your hair," Dell quipped. George patted the brown locks on his head, grateful that he had chosen that day to randomly comb them out. He was glad he had decided to come to Dell after all.

"Thanks, I like your hair too. It's quite Bieber-y…"

George stopped moving overall when a new idea hit him hard, knocking sense into him.

"We'll be the Nice Guys with Good Hair Pact!" George declared. "Yeah…and we'll have buttons and secret codes and…"

As his new friend babbled on excitedly, Dell could not help but wonder what he was getting himself into. He could either be subjecting himself to humiliation by joining a pact consisting of only two rejected men, or he could be forming an alliance with a surgeon who could get him some backstage scoop on the world of medicine.

Either way, Dell was still stinging from the repercussions of being left out of the Man Pact, even though he knew for a fact that he was significantly hotter than Cooper. And what George had said was true: Dell's haircut did ring similar to that of the cheeky new pop-star Betsey was obsessed with. Dell smiled and nodded.

"That sounds good. We should shake on it."

George then decided that the two men should have a secret handshake, exclusively for the Nice Guys with Good Hair Pact. Several brainstorms, hand flicks, knuckle punches, and head butts later, the Pact's handshake had been created.

There was a brief moment of terror flashing through the minds of the boys when a bulky shadowed figure appeared in the doorway, closing off all venues of light.

"O'Malley? What are you doing, playing Parent Trap with Dell? I called you onstage fifteen minutes ago! We're going over _The Harvard Variations _right now, and you're kind of vital to that scene!" the Chief bellowed in fits of rage. George hand went sweaty in Dell's, handshake destroyed midway through.

"But Chief, Dell and I were just bonding over our similarities as nice guys with good hair and no respect," George whined, hoping to get a sympathetic reaction from his boss, who tended to favor him outside of the musical production.

The Chief's eyes flickered between the two boys, hands linked and faces bright red, and merely rolled his eyes. "Who do the two of you think you are, the kids from _Glee_? Quit your whining and get onstage, O'Malley!"

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALLYGREYS

Once the _Harvard Variations_, a small hurdle compared to the Chief's next task, was completed, the directors moved on to what would be the most difficult part of their show, requiring that everyone in the cast be onstage:

_What You Want_.

"People, people, people!" Naomi echoed, sounding more and more like the Chief by the hour, "Richard and I are going to need _everyone _on their best behavior. This may be only an eight minute song, but it may take eight hours just to _learn _the song. There's a huge dance break that is going to require almost everyone in the cast to be involved with. Before that can even happen, there are about three other segments of the song we have to get blocked. Derek, I need you to start learning your rap…"

"I get to rap?" Derek squealed, finally gaining a sliver of respect for the show.

" _'I get to rap?' _" Pete mocked, still not on the best of terms with his girlfriend and completely blaming the neurosurgeon for it.

"Owen and Rose," Naomi continued, "we need you to begin going over your scene. Richard and I know your relationship onstage is short-lived, but we want to make sure there's some relationship there. As for everyone else, chill out until we call you. Delta Nus! Elle!"

Rose, still totally oblivious to everything that had gone on in the past week, crinkled her nose in confusion. First of all, she wondered, what was she _doing_ in the conference room? She could have sworn she was in a show called _Wicked _and not _Legally Blonde. _Second of all, who was Owen? For all Rose knew, she was stuck in last year's show, still under the impression that Derek was in love with her. The name Owen did not ring a bell.

The air-headed nurse looked up to raise her hand and ask Naomi where the green paint was when she nearly whacked the red-headed man who towered over her. He flashed Rose a radiant smile, arm extended and waiting for a hand to grasp.

"Hi, I'm Owen Hunt," he introduced himself as. When Rose showed no signs of intelligent life below her mass of crimped brown hair, Owen cleared his throat and retracted the gesture. "I play your husband in the show?"

"What show?" Rose said. Owen's eyebrows knitted together to form one thick smear of orange across his forehead.

"_Legally Blonde_…we're Elle's parents in _What You Want _together?"

"Oh! So we're not placing lunch orders? Ugh, I wanted a bagel…"

"You _were _there when Chief auditioned us all, weren't you? Don't you remember the _Fiddler on the Roof _dance routine we had to do?"

"Wait, that was for _this _musical?" Rose screeched. The small capacity of her brain reeling as the year that she had wasted thinking it was the year before zipped through her mind in a whirlwind of colorful memories. "What's going on? How did I get here? Where's the green paint I have to put on the witch?"

Owen caught her on the brink of panic and did the only thing he, as an over-abrasive ex soldier, knew how to do; he grabbed the woman squarely by her tiny shoulders and looked hard into her fidgeting green eyes. Rose looked into the stone-set eyes of Owen and nearly melted in between his warm fingers.

Now, as she peered into the deep set, gray orbs planted on Owen's face, all thoughts of Derek suddenly vanished. She may have missed an entire year of her life by twirling her hair and failing to buy a correctly dated calendar, but whoever this new Owen person was and when he came into the picture, she intended on getting to know him as soon as possible.

With a twitch of her eye that hardly resembled a wink, Rose stood and grabbed her script that, not surprisingly, was covered with absent-minded doodles. "Okay, Aaron, let's get started then!"

"It's _Owen_, actually," he replied as he unglued his hands from the suddenly calm nurse's shoulders. There was something fishy to Owen about the way Rose was staring at him—she was practically panting, as if his head had taken the shape of chocolate cake. He prayed that Cristina was occupied with something else as Rose invaded Owen's personal bubble, snuggling up to him however she possibly could without creating a liable lawsuit.

Their reading went as well as it could have gone, and soon enough, Naomi's voice echoed off the confined walls of the rehearsal space, calling Elle's parents up to the stage.

Lexie was gargling with some of Addison's green juice (Naomi had discovered that the questionable drink worked surprising wonders on the vocal chords) when Rose skipped to the stage, fingers laced with her scene partner's. Rose was literally dragging Owen's entire weight behind her, and Lexie noted how pathetic the nurse had to be if she really thought for one second that she could steal Owen away from the fangs of Cristina.

"I hope you know what you're getting yourself into," Lexie whispered to Rose once Owen was an earshot too far to hear her warnings. "Owen is kind of…unavailable at the moment."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Rose stated bluntly to Lexie as she reapplied her gaudy lip gloss, "let alone who you are. Besides, haven't you seen the way Owen looks at me? It was love at first sight, I tell you!"

Lexie simply rolled her eyes. "You should really have Derek check out that brain of yours, Rose. Seriously, how did you get out of medical school? Owen looks at you like he wants to file a restraining order against you."

"You're just jealous because you don't have a boyfriend like I do!"

Lexie was taken aback. Rose could have slapped her directly across the face and it wouldn't have been a bigger insult than her words. "I do too!" Lexie cried.

"Oh, yeah?" Rose challenged, shiny lips pursed in a scrutinizing manner. "Who?"

"Um…" Lexie began, growing panicked. She spotted Mark and Addison going over flower arrangements in the corner of the room and recalled the other day's events with Mark during "Serious".

"Mark! Mark is my boyfriend!" Lexie exclaimed.

Now, it was Rose's turn to be skeptical. "Ha! Yeah right! And I'm Santa Claus!"

"It's true!" Lexie boasted, half siding with herself and half agreeing with Rose. She peered over her shoulder, where Rose was analyzing the very bored-looking Mark while Addison vigorously read through the flower catalogue.

"Mark and I have really gotten to know each other better these past couple of weeks," Lexie explained. "Just yesterday, he kissed me." Whether or not Lexie left out the tiny detail on purpose that they were acting in a scene when the kiss happened was a mystery to even her. Rose's jaw dropped.

"No!"

"Yes! We just haven't gotten around to telling Addison about our newfound love yet, but I think she's going to take one look at us and understand."

"That's so romantic!" Rose cried. Her hand flew to her mouth as she gasped with unknown excitement. "What if you and Mark and me and Owen had, like, a double wedding! Wouldn't that be awesome?"

The Chief called for places and simply brushed the nurse away with a flick of her wrist. "That's silly, Rose. Owen is with Cristina, so I'd stop setting unrealistic goals if I were you."

Rose completely ignored Lexie's final warning and strode up to Owen, who was busy examining what the Chief said was a safe golf cart. It was obvious that the man had made another questionable eBay purchase, like he had with the harness and the bubble from last year; Owen was able to tell by the flat passenger tire, the rushed pink spray paint job, and the tattered leather seats that the cart was anything but safe. Owen doubted he would be able to drive such a contraption. Then again, thought Owen, grimly getting behind the wheel, he had also doubted that he would be able to learn his lines.

The scene started quite normally, despite the sputtering machine being driven onstage. Owen, keen on his own dialogue, played a very fitting fatherly role to Lexie, all while Rose was instructed to sip from a martini glass filled with water in the back of the golf cart, pretending to be drunk. The Chief feared that Rose would pull another one of her pranks if she were truly under the influence of alcohol, therefore justifying his decision to go with water. Truth be told, Rose did not need to have alcohol in her veins to act out of sheer stupidity.

"Good God, why? Law school is for boring, ugly, serious people, and you, Button, are none of those things!"

_What you want, Button, hey you just say the word  
__But what you want is absurd!  
__And costs a whole lot of slag…  
__And Hell why, Button?  
__When you could stay right here  
__Pursue a film career_

"How 'bout a nice…box!" Rose cheered from her seat at the golf cart. Owen continued with his little diddy, unaware that Rose was creeping up behind him, inch by inch, bar by bar.

Meredith and Cristina happened to be eating their daily sushi fixing when Meredith nearly choked on a salmon roll. Cristina was at hand, ready to perform the Heimlich, but Meredith shook her head and pointed a shaky finger toward the stage, where Rose was nearly groping the left side of Owen's body.

_Tell me what's out there that you can't get right here?_

Before Lexie could go on to sing her next line, Rose's lips came crashing down on Owen's. Fight as he may, the little woman was surprisingly too strong for Owen, as she had the upper hand by catching him off guard.

Cristina grew red with rage over the one-sided display of affection, remembering Rose's motivations all too well to know that her boyfriend wasn't to blame for this uncalled for make-out session.

"Oh, no! We are _not _going through this drama again!" Cristina shrieked, silencing the action onstage.

The Chief was experiencing a major case of de ja vu as Cristina bolted onto the golf cart and shoved Rose off of Owen by running her over. Cristina hopped out of he vehicle and slapped Rose across the face. Rose was willing to fight back and flicked Cristina in the forehead. They broke into a major cat fight, much to Alex's arousal and Owen's humiliation.

Within five minutes, in a tangle of hair and shrieks, Cristina had Rose pinned down and gasping for air. The irritated resident scanned her audience and found Pete, fumbling with some cords.

"See, Doctor Wilder? _That's _how we Seattle people celebrate our love!" Cristina declared as she straddled the defeated nurse.

Pete and Violet looked at each other, still disgusted with the fight that had gone down the day before, and both muttered "Whatever."

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALLYGREYS

Naomi was in disbelief. She and the Chief had pulled off a full scale musical number in less than 24 hours, and she was, needless to say, eager to view the final product. Everything was to a tee, but what Naomi was unaware of was how worn out her actors were.

"I'm tired," Steve, the intern, whined, receiving the support of the interns, minus Lexie.

"Yeah, can't we just see if we know everything tomorrow?" Reed Adamson begged, April Kepner and the other Mercy West doctors joining in agreement.

As for the rest of the group, they were just too tired to complain overall. Naomi and the Chief exchanged a glance that indicated that they would think about it and they huddled in the corner of the room.

"I'm horny!" Meredith declared.

"Mere!" Izzie exclaimed, embarrassed for her friend. "That's not exactly something you want to say in public…"

"Especially to _these _surgeons," Charlotte added in from the front row in the audience, knowing that Seattle Grace was reputable for more than just its surgeries. The rest of the Oceanside Wellness staff was lined on either side of her, asked to play audience for ten minutes.

"Is that all you people think we do? Have sex?" Alex asked defensively.

"Well, it's all _we_ do..." Cooper muttered.

"That's mature," side commented Charlotte, which then resulted in another one of their heated arguments and the clearing of the rest of the practice to a new row where they wouldn't have to endure the fight.

"I don't care!" Meredith whined. "All I've done is throw up and jump rope all week…and I need to fill that void!"

Suddenly, Meredith's argument started to make more sense. The doctors felt as though they hadn't seen the inside of an on-call room in years. When the Chief and Naomi came back to deliver the verdict that they would run the song, everyone was to preoccupied with their sexual tensions to care.

Which resulted in the "What You Want" dance break from Hell. To risqué for words, the Chief witnessed dance moves onstage that he had not seen since he volunteered to chaperone at his niece's prom the year before. Watching the vulgarness of the song play out, the stage crew was left gaping, Lucas' eyes and ears covered to the best of Violet's ability.

"Stop! Oh, please, make it stop!" the Chief hollered, voice breaking. "What was that? People, we're not putting on a production of _Hair_, here! There are going to be children at this performance, so please, for everyone's sake, keep it G-rated."

"I did enjoy the enthusiasm, however," Naomi added. The sweating, marching band clad group onstage was more satisfied with that response. The surgeons whooped and cheered at Naomi's comment, indicating to a sour Chief that this whole co-director thing was causing his cast to take sides.

* * *

**A/N: Hey! I meant to get this up a loooong time ago, but life suddenly got hectic again. I hope you enjoyed anyway. In case you were wondering, I did not make George and Dell befriend each other because they were both killed off on purpose. They were originally going to become friends, but editing and reading that part AFTER the Private Practice finale was needless to say...um...morbid. That being said, the Grey's finale was super scary, but that just made it super awesome! That's my two cents. Reviews...you know the drill.**

**-ILoVeWicked**


	10. Ireland, Part Two

**Chapter 10 – Ireland, Part Two**

Callie and Cooper, though it was never verbally declared, had grown close over the course of the show's rehearsal period. There was no intimacy linked to their relationship, but they had awkwardly, in their own insecure ways, found solace and friendship in each other. Callie filled that void in Cooper's heart to constantly have a woman companion by his side, and Cooper supplied Callie with a much needed banter partner who had a personality almost exactly like hers.

Much like the residents and far from the Nice Guys with Good Hair Pact, Callie and Cooper had formed a dangerous cult of tortured souls. The way their minds picked up the frequencies of each others thoughts was intimidating to those who refused to give them enough credit. It was almost too easy for the duo to earn their own lunch table.

They typically ate in silence, sarcastic remark or a lament about their lost loves here and there. Each of them was too busy paying attention to their own dark, twisty thoughts to converse over them. Only if something significant had happened at rehearsal or the other's back was turned to an epic cafeteria fight would Callie or Cooper speak. Mayonnaise forming in globs at the corners of Cooper's mouth, he nearly dropped his sandwich at the sight before him. Callie's back was turned as she dug into a bowl of pasta, oblivious to the lovely clue karma decided to place a table away from her.

"Hey," Cooper spoke, breaking the code of silence. Callie's head jerked up, mouth forming a gaping 'O' where a noodle should have been. Once they had established that they were on talking ground, Cooper pointed over the woman's shoulder. "Check that out."

Callie followed his finger, only to be misled. "Big whoop. The residents are spit-balling Rose and the interns. That happens _everyday. _Californians know nothing…"

"Not that," Cooper retorted, though the clueless interns searching for the source of the sticky wad of paper on the back of their necks was quite amusing, "_That_."

His finger shifted to the left, as did Callie's frame of vision. The passionate Hispanic woman was suddenly full of words and interjections once her head whirled back around.

"That's Arizona! Sitting alone! In the cafeteria! Where we are!"

"Thank you, Master of the Obvious."

"Omigod…what should I do? What should I say? Wait, no. I don't _know _her. I shouldn't say or do anything, because I'm about as close to her as Coop is…" Callie was thinking aloud by this point, and it took sacrificing his sandwich, throwing it in his friend's face, for Cooper to silence that thinking.

"You invite her over to eat with us, because you're a nice person and you don't shoot spitballs at people," Cooper supplied, only to be greeted with skepticism from across the table. "Just ask her to eat with us…it's not like you're proposing to her. I honestly don't think eating alone is a choice, and it's her first week on the job."

"Cooper…"

"Invite her over here," Cooper encouraged through gritted teeth as he attempted to reassemble his sandwich.

Callie sighed with defeat and rose to rip off the band-aid she been wearing to cover the cuts and bruises of her previous love life. That band-aid had begun to curl at the edges. It had already healed a wound and was waiting to be disposed of, but Callie, too afraid of the pain that ripping the adhesive strip away would cause her, chose to keep it on until it fell off, much like the scab it was covering.

Cooper just so happened to interfere and ripped the band-aid halfway off for her. If it hadn't have been for her friend's casualty when it came to being friendly with new people, Callie would have not been standing. But Callie was on her feet and facing the lone Arizona Robbins, wasn't she? With a sigh and a few more urges from Cooper, Callie made baby steps, ripping off her band-aid inch by inch, until she had arrived at Arizona's table.

The blonde woman looked up from her magazine and greeted Callie with a bright smile, something the Seattle Grace head of Orthopedics was not used to, given no one in Seattle smiled willingly.

"Can I help you?" Arizona asked. Callie wrung her hands in front of her summersaulting stomach, not quite sure what to do with the baton she had just been passed.

"I—I, um…you looked lonely, over here…you know, by yourself. D—did…do you want to sit with C—Cooper and I?"

Band-aid ripped? Check. Now it was Arizona's decision whether or not to oblige to her gesture. The woman blinked at her for a moment, giving Callie the opportunity to scan her face for any tinge of remorse, any battle wounds of her own. Much to Callie's relief, Arizona's creamy skin looked scar-free and sunny. Arizona shut her magazine and nodded slowly, unaccustomed to the forwardness she had not known in women in New York.

"I'd like that," Arizona replied, joining Callie as they returned to the table. By taking the plunge, Callie had unknowingly turned on a switch that would slowly shed light onto the bleak, pathetic rut she was in as the lunch table expanded to invite one more person.

Arizona was surprisingly conversational. Gone was the shy woman who sat alone and read up on classic novels in the corner during rehearsals and emerged from her cocoon was a bright, bubbling personality with a beautiful face to match it. Callie couldn't help but feel like she was twelve again, caught in that ever-so-opportune moment where the crush decided to strike up a conversation during recess. Butterflies that Callie had thought she had gotten rid of long before Arizona came around rose in her stomach and sent every limb in her body shaking. She babbled like a barbarian and blurted things that should have gone unsaid for a first conversation.

Arizona, from the looks of it, did not seem to mind Callie's girlishness one bit. What Callie did not know was that Arizona was feeling every exact measure of a fool herself while talking to Callie, but Arizona just so happened to be better at managing nerves than Callie was.

After Callie unintentionally slurred people of her own racial heritage out to gain pity laughs and caused Arizona to involuntarily gasp, she turned to her friend for help. Cooper was suddenly silent once again, eating his repaired sandwich and only joining in with nods, smiles, and one-syllable answers, much to Callie's irritation.

"So, Arizona…" Callie said, pretty sure that if she kept at this stop and go pace with the pretty girl there would be no more ice left to break. "What do you think of the show so far? I know _Cooper really enjoys it_…right, Coop?"

Cooper looked up from his sandwich, noted that Arizona hadn't completely lost interest in his floundering friend, and shrugged. "I'm only here for, like, another week, so I couldn't really say. Why don't you two talk about the show, since you're both surgeons and in the cast—ow!"

Callie had kicked him underneath the table. And she kicked him hard.

Arizona tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, shifting her weight on the greasy cafeteria chair to relax her nerves. These new Seattle people were far more sociable than the New Yorkers she had spent half her life knowing, but they were certainly weirder than any New York resident she had ever met.

"I…um…for me, personally, I can't seem to enjoy the musical."

"Really? Now, that's a conversation!" Cooper remarked, only to be kicked again. He felt as though he was back in the grips of Charlotte once again, the way Callie was abusing him that afternoon.

"It's not that I don't enjoy what the Chief is doing. I think it's great, actually. Working with sick children is what I do all day, and the fact that they can receive some enjoyment on the holidays is just wonderful. It's just…I thought I was coming down here for a consult, not an equity contract, if you know what I mean," Arizona clarified, nervously chewing on her chocolate bar.

"That seems to be the Chief's favorite excuse to lore people down to Rain City: A New Musical Drama Starring the Surgical Motley Crew," Cooper muttered, sociable now that the topics had taken a favorable turn to bashing the musical he was unwillingly hailed to.

Arizona nodded empathetically. "And so being involved with this musical has made it harder for me to get comfortable in this hospital, especially with the people here. You all have…very strong…personalities, and I feel like if I were in my niche, surgery, we could get along so much easier than we have this past week."

"I totally agree," Callie said breathlessly, words coming to her much more easily now that Arizona had wiped her burden from her chest by pouring out her heart first. "It's a great cause…but he should really hire a theatre company to do the work while we can just enjoy our holiday break." The two of the women laughed together organically for the first time.

"You guys get holiday break?" Cooper whined, recalling the good old days when Addison was not queen bee at the practice and getting off from work was easier than tying his shoes. "Lucky…"

Callie was no longer paying attention to Cooper's boorish remarks, however. She had found herself deeply immersed in Arizona's blue eyes. The new girl's insecurities shone profoundly in her facial features, and Callie could tell that, just like she was, Arizona was more alone than ever in her life. It was a bold move, but Callie took her shaky, sweaty palm from her lap and placed in on top of Arizona's hand.

"Look, I'll always be here for you, if you need a friend. Anytime, anywhere, you've got a problem, just page me and I'll be of assistance," Callie reassured her. The sound of Cooper's giggles beside Callie were too difficult for even physical abuse to cover up.

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALLYGREYS

Not many people knew the dirty little secrets Mark Sloan held from most of the world. His highly confidential, personal closet of skeletons was exclusive to only a few select persons in his life.

It came as a shock to everyone, save Addison and Derek, when Mark was spotted one dreary morning at rehearsal, strumming a glossy acoustic guitar. His chubby fingers glided on the brassy strings with elegance and experience that indicated that this was not Mark's first time handling the instrument.

Although Addison knew of Mark's musical capabilities, she was just as unknowing as everyone else as to what Mark's exact intentions were with the guitar, why he had the sudden urge to break it out, and why he would not tell her what he was planning. The Chief was obviously in on the deed, having Addison stand onstage for spotlight checks with Pete, and she did not necessarily enjoy being out of the loop.

Mark did not completely fit the bill when it came to the serenading, traditional romantic that left women swooning, but for someone as special to him as Addison, he felt that a little change for her sake would not completely bust his reputation.

Mark was working on perfecting the ballad that would be dedicated to Addison on their wedding night. She had always been a sucker for Sinatra, namely the widely popular "Way You Look Tonight", so Mark took it upon himself to conduct a plan that involved an acoustic rendition of the song and a glass of wine to give him the confidence to sing in front of his family.

The musical was unfortunately eating up too much valuable time he could be spending practicing for the big ceremony, just a few months ahead. Each chord needed to be drummed to perfection, every note he sang needed to be the exact pitch, and everyone one the banquet hall needed to be melting in a puddle of their tears by the time he was finished, especially his new bride.

Mark decided to embrace the demoralizing remarks from the Man Pact and the inquiries of the interns if it meant getting time to work on his number. The fact that he could hardly concentrate, executing the music sloppily in the process, frustrated him to no end.

Addison respected her fiancé's pleas to keep her distance while he grunted and scribbled angrily on a piece of crumpled paper in the corner of the room. She kept herself occupied by trying to memorize her lines during the lighting session, which were teensy in amount compared to the year before.

Lexie, however, was not required to stay away from Mark. She flung herself across the room to where Mark was diligently singing to himself, plopped down beside where he had set his guitar, and smiled up at him expectantly. Mark nearly jumped through the ceiling when, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Lexie sitting Indian-style before him.

"Hey, Mark!" Lexie greeted enthusiastically, flipping her hair over her shoulder to expose her low-cut sweater. Mark gaped at the young intern, guitar pick he had positioned in the grasp of his strong jaw suddenly on the floor.

Lexie swayed back and forth, careful to allow the perfume she dabbed all over her body to waft into Mark's nostrils. "What are you working on?"

"Oh," Mark said lamely, when he realized that she was referring to the guitar and not the fact that he was devising a plan to ship her off to Siberia. "Just a little diddy for the big night…"

Lexie was floored. Mark had been sitting in the back of the room, working for hours and hours, perfecting a song for their opening night together. She allowed her hand to fly to her chest as she sighed seductively.

"Oh, wow! Can I hear what you have so far?" she asked, making the advance to join him on the box of light bulbs that he was crushing. Mark carefully inched away from Lexie's body, failing miserably. Every move he made to get away, she was on the ball, staying right beside him.

He was reluctant, worried that Addison might hear onstage and spoil the surprise, but he gave in to Lexie's sweet smile anyway. "Um, sure, I guess…hand me that guitar, will you?"

Lexie obeyed Mark's request, overdramatically standing and testing out the effectiveness of the Bend and Snap as she plucked the guitar from the ground. Mark was unfazed, rather using the opportunity while Lexie was standing to breathe in his own personal bubble.

"Here you go!"

Mark smiled politely as he took the guitar from the younger woman and skimmed his pick across the strings of the guitar. He was too focused on his first performance of the song to even consider the way Lexie was trying everything in her will to lead him on.

_Some day, when I'm awfully low  
When the world is cold  
I will feel a glow just thinking of you  
And the way you look tonight_

_You're lovely, with your smile so warm  
And your cheeks so soft  
There is nothing for me but to love you  
And the way you look tonight_

Little Grey had to bite her toungue to keep from cheering like a fangirl as she listened to Mark's mellowed rendition of the popular tune. The lyrics, and the way he executed them, seemed to almost scream, "I love the way _you _look tonight, Lexie. And we'll look even better together when we elope in Las Vegas and leave Addison and her precious sun-kissed life in Los Angeles where it belongs".

"Does it sound okay?" Mark asked, worry tinged in his ever-so-attractive blush. He felt like a fool, aiming to gain approval from somone who was barely out of diapers and probably had never touched a guitar up until five minutes ago. He needed the positive reinforcement from wherever he could get it to keep himself from throwing in the towel before he embarrassed himself.

Lexie nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah, it does!" When Mark looked at her in denial, Lexie embraced the opportunity to place her hand cleverly on his thigh. Neither of them happened to notice when Mark's muscles involuntarily tensed up the second they touched.

"I'm serious Mark, you have some amazing musical talent. I'm sure whoever the lucky lady you're singing this to will love it," Lexie assured him, playing the fool. Mark blinked in astonishment. His self-esteem was so low that he forced himself to take Lexie's compliment and go with it.

"Well…thanks then," Mark said after a moment of awkward silence in which Lexie refused to move from her place on the box, hand three centimeters away from another woman's territory. He expected her to get the idea and go with the comment, but was shocked when Lexie enveolped him in a passionate hug.

"No problem," she answered as she pulled away and finally stood. She began walking away, and Mark began to let out a sigh of relief that he chose to hold in until she was clearly out of sight, until Lexie whirled back around.

"And Mark? Anytime you need me, I'll be around," Lexie informed him, allowing her voice to get husky as her excitement admiration got the best of her. She winked. Then she scooted off to relive all of the past ten minutes' details by writing them in her diary.

Little did Mark and Lexie know that they were not completely alone in that back corner of the rehearsal space. Curiosity got the best of Addison when she heard the sweet melodic voice of Mark singing and strumming along to the familiar chords of Sinatra. Squinting just to see through the blaring spotlight that nearly blinded her, Addison was able to make out the faint outline of Mark. Not only could she see him swaying along to the music, enveloped in a hobby that she had always loved to watch him expand, but Lexie Grey was beside him, foot tapping along to the beat and mouth practically suctioned to Mark's cheekbone.

She kept her anger at bay for as long as the Chief needed her. If there was anything she had learned in the past week, it was that acting impulsively on jealousy got a person nowhere in this production. Addison took the time to devise how exactly she would approach Mark on the topic down to the final punctuation, but when the Chief released her, the primordial beast within was way ahead of the tortoise that was supposed to win the race.

"Mark Sloan!" Addison exclaimed accusingly as she approached him from behind. Mark scrambled to gather his supplies and hide them from Addison, but it was too late for trying to hide anything. Addison had already hoisted him up from the box with one hand, grabbing the collar of his shirt. Her soft eyes had inherited the icy blue tint they carried when she was angry. Mark gulped, certain that she had discovered his gift and was displeased by the gesture.

"Yes, Dear?"

"Don't 'yes, dear' me," Addison barked. "Don't think that you can put me onstage for an hour, have Pete blind me and think that I won't catch you and Little Grey making beautiful music together!"

Mark stifled a chuckle, relieved that she had been led to believe something far from his actual intentions. "Wait…you thought that I was stalling you so I could hang out with Lexie?"

"I think hanging out would be putting what the two of you were doing _lightly_."

Mark, at one point sure she was joking around, trying to make him feel guilty in that condescending way she always pulled off with flying colors, fought the urge to laugh even harder when he realized that she was being serious. He clutched her trembling shoulders in each of his hands, giving them a light squeeze.

"Addison, if you think that I would bend over back to finally have you as my fiancé and then throw it all away to be with a juvenile, confused, and very hormonal intern, you really don't know me at all."

Addison blinked, calming a little as Mark's argument became more and more rational. Still, she was not convinced. She recalled the previous year's events and how the relationship of the characters had brought her and Mark together again. She shuddered at how well her future husband and Lexie worked onstage currently. "Could have fooled me. You two have such great chemistry onstage…"

"That's called being a character, Adds. If it makes you feel any better, _Warner _doesn't even have any feelings for Lexie Grey."

"Give me one good reason why I should believe you," Addison demanded, her childhood stubbornness, used most commonly when she was interrogating her father about his affairs, reemerging.

Mark sighed as he stared into those eyes that could burn a hole right through his heart at times. If spoiling their wedding surprise was what it was going to take to earn back her trust, love, and respect, then he was willing to sacrifice it.

"That song…wasn't a jam session between me and Lexie. It—it was a surprise f—for you on our wedding night. I was going to sing "The Way You Look Tonight" to you in front of everyone at the reception…"

Addison was suddenly mush in his arms. The reaction was a little earlier than he had anticipated from her, but it was, nonetheless, exactly what he had desired all along.

Through her sobs, she asked if she could hear the song. Mark, having just added the finishing touches to the piece, was more than eager to give the first taste of the final product to the one person it mattered most to.

Once the song, effortlessly performed by her beautiful, romantic fiancé, was completed, Addison sniffled. "Alright, I believe you, and I'm sorry I acted so silly." She peered over her shoulder at Lexie, who was scribbling something down in a notebook of sorts at the other end of the room. "But how are you going to break it to her?"

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALLYGREYS

"So, Violet told me to tell you that she'll be rooming with me for the remainder of the show, meaning that you get Charlotte," Cooper explained to Pete during a self-designated crew break, as he had been designated messenger between the estranged couple. "Good luck, she likes to throw things."

"Well, you can tell Violet that I'd rather stay with Charlotte anyway. But she can't get mad if I just so happen to kiss Charlotte and call it acting," Pete replied, flustered that Violet had not cooled down yet. Cooper glowered at the other man as he began to sulk off to deliver Violet Pete's regards, and Pete's mind was suddenly changed.

"Wait…I don't mean that! I mean, fine by me, but I get Lucas."

"I don't see why you two can't just talk to each other…" Sam grumbled. "It's ridiculous how childish you're both acting."

Pete raised his eyebrows. "Oh really? _We're _being childish? How are things going with that Bailey woman, Samuel? Or how about Naomi?"

Before Sam could figure out a legitimate comeback, Dell appeared, fuming.

"Ugh, don't even mention Naomi!" Dell huffed as he joined the semi-circle of Oceansiders. "Has anyone else noticed how much of a dictator she's become since Chief gave her the job of being assistant director? She hasn't called me by my first name since Monday."

"Yesterday, I was told that a woman with the attention span of a gnat should not have been given the seemingly simple task of sewing fabrics together," Violet said, clearly insulted as she sat as far away from her ex-boyfriend as possible. "The Chief said the same exact thing…I guess I should have mentioned that I failed home economics in high school when we first introduced ourselves."

"It's really not that difficult. It's just sewing," said Pete.

"Tell Pete I didn't ask him," Violet whispered loudly to Cooper, who rolled his eyes and looked at Pete without an explanation for his best friend's refusal to cooperate.

"Can we get back to Naomi now, guys?" Dell asked, feeling as though he was the only one who wasn't concerned with problems of his own and actually cared about Naomi's mental being. "I'm worried about her."

"Yeah. She's like a mini-Chief."

"She's a tyrant, is what she is."

"I never imagined my ex-wife getting so involved in something so unrelated to medicine. It's creepy."

"I'm sure I could sew really well if someone gave me a fair chance."

"Heh," Charlotte scoffed, joining the pack. "Ya'll are talking about Naomi, or Nae Nae, I should say." The group nodded, as the feelings were mutual. Dell sighed as he watched Naomi bark orders at Lexie and George onstage.

"See? She's too wrapped up in this musical to even remember that she's a doctor with friends who care about her," Dell pointed out. Cooper shrugged.

"Well, it's a shame she forgot about the little people as she moved up in the world," Cooper said, trying his hand at one of his trademark lame jokes. "Do you think she's going to convert to surgery after this?"

"Do you think Santa is going to leave you a lump of coal this year for being such an ass, Cooper?" Charlotte asked sarcastically. Cooper opened his mouth to make an argument when the midwife cut in again.

"Cooper, can we please be serious?" Dell pleaded, concerned that the plane ride had effected everyone's brain but his. "What are we going to do to snap her out of it? Clearly, Naomi's gone power hungry and this musical is filling that void."

"Not to mention how bad of an influence the Chief has been on her," Sam quipped. He finally came to after thinking over how tyrannical Naomi had actually become just by spending all her free time with the Chief of Seattle Grace Hospital.

It was only the other morning, and Naomi had bought a whistle, using it to get everyone in the taxi to go to rehearsal, which was the Chief's suggestion. Naomi had been so busy with her job, which required far more work than the Chief had to do, because she was too wrapped up in trying to impress the Chief. She could not pick up on how he was taking advantage of her. Naomi even failed to notice the budding relationship between Sam and Bailey, which Sam was sure she would have noticed if she were acting like her normal self.

"Oh, jeez…what _are _we going to do?" Sam asked, beginning to panic.

Before anyone could respond, the Great Nae Nae was blowing her whistle in each of their ears.

"Stage crew, get back to work! I've been calling for you for the past five minutes! We're not paying you to sit around and gossip!"

Pete crossed his arms over his broad chest. "You're not paying us at all…"

"No back talk, Wilder; I believe there's some lighting that has not yet been perfected!" Naomi interrupted, her eyes ablaze as they surveyed the bumbling group, looking for the right words to describe her feelings for them at the moment. "You are all hopeless fools! There's a reason why the stagehands hardly get any credit at the Tonys…they're almost as incompetent as you…almost!"

"Now get back to work!" Naomi yelled. The Chief, who just so happened to be passing by, winced at the decibel level Naomi was exceeding.

"You heard the woman, get back to work," the Chief reasserted. The Oceansiders rolled their eyes and groaned together as they got up and obeyed their master, plans at helping their friend defeated.

* * *

A/N: So that's chapter ten. Hope all you Calzona (it's happening, slowly but surely) and Maddison (LOVED writing the guitar thing) fans enjoyed everything. Up next: The final dress rehearsal, an epic CharCoop fight, and Addison, Mark, Lexie, and George discover that they all have something in common. You know what makes me happy, so please make my day (which has been pretty rough) and do what you awesome readers do ;)

-ILoVeWicked


	11. Seriously

**Chapter 11 – Serious…ly**

"Alright, people!" Chief bellowed as he stomped around the perimeter of the rehearsal space. Those fortunate enough to jump out of his path of terror were spared from a shove into the nearest wall. Despite the fact that Naomi was taking all of the hard directorial work by quiet force, it was the Chief who was acting out in frustration. It was not a Seattle Grace winter show without a Chief melt-down a few days before opening night.

"Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, in case any of you were not aware," the Chief sighed through grunts and groans as he massaged his temples. Rose's hand flew to her chest.

"It's _Christmas_?" the airy nurse shrieked. Owen, who had remained a safe distance from Rose since her brawl with Cristina, lost a little more respect for the woman following that comment. The Chief rolled his eyes and ignored the outburst, as it wasn't the stupidest remark Rose had made.

"Yes, tomorrow is Christmas Eve _and _our final dress rehearsal."

"Wait, so we have to spend Christmas Eve _here_?" Steve, the intern asked. When the Chief regarded his inquiry with a harsh nod of his throbbing head, every newcomer to the musical theatre experience went up in uproar.

"Chief, some of us have families," persisted Steve, as if his singular conflict would become the ultimate turning point of the Chief's plans. The Chief was suddenly behind the bravely outspoken intern, a warm palm clasped on each of Steve's scrawny shoulders.

"Ah, young Stephen, I think we all need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture here: your families don't matter this Christmas. Your family this holiday season is standing among you in this very room, and they are counting on you do be the best ensemble member you can be. Not only that, you wise thing, but you're a surgeon. Surgeons should respect that they come into this career wanting to be selfless, even if that means being on call during their wife's birthday or standing through a ten hour surgery and missing the New Year's Eve Ball drop in Times Square. Any good surgeon would put their personal problems aside and think about the patients who also do not get to spend Christmas Eve with their family, the reason why you are participating in this musical."

Steve blinked in astonishment, still caught in the Chief's tightening grasp, and bowed his head to apologize. The Chief grinned down at the display of weakness below him and turned his attention to the rest of the group who had chosen to complain.

"Anyone else want to object?" Chief asked. Not one peep of discontent would be heard, no matter how many people wanted to show that they had more gumption and drive to get out of the final dress rehearsal than Steve did.

"Now, as I was saying, tomorrow is the final dress. Meaning that I want all of your to really take today to relax and become in tune with what is going to happen in the next couple of days."

"So we can go home?" Cristina asked. Though she was a member of the original Seattle Grace musical cast, she still felt the need to try her hand at objection. The Chief was ready to unleash another monologue, one that was less cool and collected, on the cocky resident when Naomi looked up from her paperwork and stepped in.

"Unfortunately, we have to keep everyone here so we can run all of the big musical numbers," Naomi said sympathetically, acting toward the cast eons nicer than she had acted toward the stage crew the day before, as it had been throughout the whole process. "The Chief and I would like to see 'Whipped into Shape' first, since it is the most intense and the musical number we have seen the least of."

Charlotte was already ahead of the game, passing out—or rather, chucking—orange, plastic jump ropes to the dancers in the song and corralling them all onstage. The Chief watched the actors take their places with a weary eye and Naomi rushed to sit behind the piano to get a good view.

"Cue music, Wilder!" Naomi screeched.

"Yeah, whatever," came the reply from the sound booth.

Moments later, Meredith and the rest of the dancers were using what little enthusiasm they had to flounce about the stage, keeping perfect time. Charlotte had clearly worked on the stamina of the actors, as Meredith belted, jumped and danced effortlessly at the same time as if she had been training for Broadway (or a triathlon) all her life.

As Derek sat among the members of the Man Pact, he noticed that the boys were suddenly silent. Derek pondered why not one nasty comment about the number was being whispered down the lane when he realized that they were all staring at something. Derek, who had been standing next to an entranced Alex, took his index finger and followed his line of vision to approximately where he was staring at Meredith up onstage. Derek repeated this process with just about everyone in the clan of men, and he was stunned to receive the same results each time.

Moving on to the next step of his investigation, Derek sat cross-legged on the floor and analyzed his fiancé for anything noteworthy. It took an entire chorus for his head to finally wrap around the answer, but Derek was shocked, appalled, and suddenly uncomfortable when he realized that the men were staring at the flashy display of Meredith's sex appeal.

The costume she wore barely covered one-fourth of Meredith's body. The jumping around and dancing quite scantily on top of that did not help much either. Derek shifted on his bottom, unsettled, and vigilantly watched the song pan out until Meredith was doing squat thrusts from a position on the floor that required extreme flexibility, then he excused himself from the room.

Meanwhile, Miranda, whose feelings from her diva out the week before had returned with the mentioning of Charlotte's new job, had migrated over to the piano, where Naomi was perched and watching the scene intently with a huge smile on her face.

"Who knew Charlotte could create such an awesome scene?" Naomi asked whoever had decided to sneak up behind her. "This is better than the Broadway choreography!"

Miranda snorted. Sure, the dancers were all moving in sync and singing like a one hundred member choir was onstage, but that did not mean they had an ounce of fun making it that way. If Charlotte King even came close to being a Nazi, all of the jailbirds in Whipped into Shape would be miserable and suffering greatly. Doctor Bailey was fairly certain that a blonde Southern belle was incapable of inflicting as much pain as she would have done.

"Yeah, it's okay, I suppose. I've seen better. Hell, _I _could have been a better choreographer than Charlotte," Bailey remarked. Once Naomi had identified the intruder, she made a connection with the comment and the melt down that occurred the last time the sounds of 'Whipped Into Shape' wafted in everyone's ears.

Naomi whirled around at stared at Bailey for a long while, smirking. "You're jealous of Charlotte, aren't you?" Miranda, unaware that jealous was that frustrating unknown emotion keeping her tossing and turning at night, gaped at the other woman.

"Jealous? What…no! I'm not jealous, I'm just saying that I can't see what the Chief sees in her. I'm just concerned for the Chief's clouded judgment, is all. I wouldn't call that jealousy."

"Oh, I would," Naomi contradicted. "Believe me, I see jealousy all over our practice twenty-four-seven…I would know it when I see it."

The assistant-director chuckled as her attention was diverted back to the stage. "It's like that song from _Next to Normal_…oh, what's it called?" Miranda was taken aback by Naomi's harsh words and eventually escaped backstage when the Chief's right-hand woman began singing:

_Superboy and the Invisible Girl  
__Son of steel and daughter of air  
__He's a hero, a lover, a prince  
__She's not there…_

Confused, hurt, and above all, fuming, Miranda stumbled through the cluttered backstage area, filled with costumes and set pieces. The elaborate design the Chief was aiming for the production to have was much more thought out than the year before, but it was equally as annoying to hardly have any room to hide backstage from any troubles the cast ensued.

Miranda happened to find Dell's vacant spot from behind the curtains. With a huff here and a moan there, Bailey sat herself on Dell's chair and buried her head in her hands. She contemplated the recent blows life had handed her.

After _Wicked_ a divorce from Tucker seemed far from an option of her marriage, but the year withered them back down as Miranda moved up in the world of surgery and Will spent more and more time alone with his angry father. Naturally, Tuck interpreted every surgery as an attack aimed to harm him and planted the idea in Will's head that his mother hated him. It was no secret that Will was biased toward Tucker, and it broke Miranda's heart, not being able to turn back time and be there to change her son's mind about her.

On top of it all, the Chief was slowly finding more women in his life to play favorites with: Meredith, Charlotte, and even Naomi stood higher on the Chief's watch list than Miranda did, and she was sure of it. Not even surgery could hold her together anymore, because Meredith Grey was always taking over to "learn". For some unknown reason, Charlotte was more qualified to lead the dance number than she. Naomi, merely because she and Richard Webber had an obscure common interest, was always by the Chief's side. Where did that leave Miranda in his life? Stuck playing the most pathetic character in the show.

Now, more than ever, it seemed, the only stable relationship she held with a man was with...

"Bailey?"

"Sam?" Miranda grew red-hot, as if he had been summoned by her thoughts. "H—how did you find me here?"

"You stepped on my park bench while you were running away backstage."

"Well, for the record, it doesn't look like a park bench…looks like a damn flat piece of unpainted wood to me."

"It's not put together yet…are you crying?"

Miranda's hand flew to her cheek, where tears had formed and were free falling to her lap. The surgeon's mouth formed unrecognizable shapes in search of a viable answer for the self-help doctor.

"No! I'm not crying!" she lied blatantly while she bravely tried to whisk the tears, and the emotions they carried, away, as if her eyes would suddenly be less puffy, her heart would hurt a little less. Sam cocked his head, studying the broken figure of what had taken Los Angeles by storm earlier in the year.

"You're upset."

"I'm _not _upset," Bailey insisted.

"Well, you're surely not jumping for joy…"

"Just shut-up, okay? Maybe I am upset; I don't know what I'm feeling. I don't know much about anything anymore."

Suddenly, Sam was on his knees and at her level. He took her hands in his own, catching her off guard, and Miranda's breath had been taken away. She eyed him in surprise as his velvety chocolate eyes bore a fresh hole into her heart.

"What's wrong?"

Miranda sniffled and tried to break from his grasp, his gaze. "I—I don't know."

"You know," Sam said as he tugged her body closer to his. The weather in Seattle was nearly below zero, but Dell's curtain corner was on fire. "You are the most composed woman I've ever met. No one has their crap together like you do, Miranda Bailey. So spill, what's eating at you?"

"I'm not as composed as you would think…"

"Well, if we're not accepting compliments, I'd like a reason to retract the statement. Face it, you're not getting out of this."

If he was not such a smooth conversationalist, she would have shoved him away the moment emotional bile began pouring into her throat. Her eyes flew to her trapped hands, and Bailey realized that she wasn't going onstage for 'Bend and Snap' unless she started talking.

"It's just that, lately…this is so stupid…"

"I'm not here to judge," Sam assured her, fingers tracing circles in her palms, "just to listen." Bailey sighed heavily and stopped fretting over the tears that were brewing in her eyes again. There was no stopping them.

"Lately, in life, I feel like I'm falling short of first place for everything. My divorce has been anything but easy, as Tucker thinks it's fun to take more and more from me emotionally with each stupid day that we're still married. And what kind of husband—_ex-husband_—turns your innocent four-year-old son against you? Then, the one thing I can do to keep my mind away from my problems at home, surgery, is slowly being taken away with this stupid musical…and more and more prodigies coming into the Chief's life. Did you know I used to be his favorite surgeon? Taught me everything I know today about being a good doctor, that man, and now he doesn't even give me the time of day. Not to mention he picked Charlotte King over me for the toughest job in the production.

I'm falling flat, Sam. I keep coming so close to the finish line, but I keep burning out before I can win the race. Nobody remembers second place. More people recognize the person who comes in last than the person who comes in second. Sometimes, maybe if I just gave up…I'd get noticed and…"

Bailey was at loss for words, her heart relieved of the pressure built up inside of her but replaced with a new swelling of confusion. Sam's lips were hard and rough against hers, his soft fingers raking promises through her hair. He broke from her, melancholy smile on his face, and touched her cheek with his thumb.

"If you even _think_ about giving up, let alone settling for second place again…none of those things that you told me took away from what I believe about you. I know you, Miranda. I know you don't settle for less than first place, and if you try to, I'll stop you."

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALLYGREYS

"I swear to Mary, Jesus, and Joseph…COOPER!"

"You rang, Sweetheart?" Cooper asked slyly as Sandy pulled him from behind a corner. Charlotte glared from her once-pile of props to the dog, the cause of the problem, and then at Cooper, the source of it.

"Don't you try and woo me, you arrogant little baby."

Cooper's hands flew up in defense. "What did I do now?"

"Your dumb dog got into the props, which I had neatly ordered and assembled, and ate half of them. The other half is no longer in order and most likely lost forever. Dress rehearsal is tomorrow, Coop. You know what time it is now?"

Cooper, already sensing the storm ahead, looked down at his watch in annoyance. His face flushed crimson when the time read later than Charlotte preferred to stay up. Ignoring the question, Cooper whipped his head back up and pointed a finger in the blonde's direction.

"First of all, he's not my dog…"

"You're the dog handler, moron. It's not like you have four jobs to juggle like some of us here. Where were you anyway? Weren't you supposed to be watching that mongrel at all times?"

"Well, I give her back to the Chief at eleven, so technically, it wasn't my responsibility…"

"I haven't checked the table until now, so this could have happened at any time today, and I know for a fact that the mutt wasn't with you during your precious lunch hour with your new Spanish rose."

"You think Callie's my _girlfriend_?"

"I ain't calling her your boyfriend."

Cooper glowered at his former lover. She had crossed a line with that comment. "If you had taken the time to get to know Callie like I have, let alone anyone from Seattle Grace, maybe you would see that we're strictly just friends…but you're too busy being LA's Nazi to get close to anyone. That's nothing new for you, right, Ice Queen?"

Charlotte, teeth bared, went in for another attack. "Wow, LA's Nazi, that's clever. Where did you hear that one? From the surgeon circus? We both know you're too stupid to come up with that one on your own."

"Stupid is a cute word…afraid to use bigger words, are we? And _I'm _the baby? How about you…anything else in Pandora's Box should know? Why does 'Whipped into Shape' look so good, huh? I thought you 'don't do theatre'…"

"You know how I feel about that!" Charlotte screamed, stopping him before he could go any further. Unfortunately for the couple, the prop table was located in the center of the room, and their argument had caught the attention of those still lingering home for the night. "You son of a—"

"Okay, okay, I think that's enough drama for tonight," Chief cut in, Naomi and Callie taking each of their fighters to separate sides of the ring. "Not to worry, cast, we'll get new props right away!"

Charlotte, chin jutting out in strong sufferance as Naomi carried her outside to her car, whispered to the trusted friend, "I hate him."

Cooper, tears in his eyes emasculating him more than his ex-girlfriend ever could, was whisked away from Charlotte's view by Callie. Through the pain, he whispered to his 'new girlfriend', "I love her."

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALLYGREYS

Derek found Meredith looking up into the first snowfall of the year when he retired from rehearsal for the night. She had refused to go home without him, despite how weird Derek was acting since the 'Whipped' showcase, and she had stayed true to her promise.

How long she had been watching icy tears from the sky powder her eyelashes, he was unsure, but he made sure to take a mental snapshot of this moment of peace in his fiancé, for she never looked more beautiful and magical in his life. Something about a white Christmas made Meredith somewhat happier than usual, and Derek was content to see her getting what she wanted for once.

He cleared his throat.

"Meredith?" She looked at him, cheeks bitten with Jack Frost's blessing, and smiled. "While I could easily watch you like this forever, you're blocking the car door, and if I ever want to see you this peaceful ever again, I know I have to get you home and in bed soon. You've had a tiring day of…air humping."

Meredith rolled her eyes, the moment ruined by Derek's jealousy once again. "Is that what the avoiding and awkward one-word answers all day was about? Because the song is supposed to be sexy, Der; _I'm _supposed to be sexy. It's what the character is all about. According to Naomi, Legally Blonde is cutesy compared to some other Broadway shows' raciness."

"And all the guys looking at you like that? You were cool with it? I know I sure wasn't."

"Well, you're just going to have to get used to it. I'm going to be dancing like that, dressed like that, in front of hundreds of our patients whether you're cool with it or not. I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is. It's like you and your character…you had Violet all but drooling and I didn't mind, because I knew that wasn't you up there."

"That's totally different."

Meredith giggled. "No, it isn't, actually. Acting is all it is, Derek. Sexy Brooke Wyndham has eyes for anything that moves…but plain old Meredith Grey can only see one man."

"Pete?"

"You, Idiot," Meredith snapped as she cupped two icy hands around Derek's face. "Get over this protective, jealousy thing, unless you want to end up like any of the other couples around here who have ruined everything they have because of a little pettiness and envy."

"I love you, Meredith Grey."

"I love you to, Derek Shepherd. Now kiss me, it's beginning to snow."

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALYLGREYS

_What did I get myself into? _Addison all but screamed aloud as she scoured the hospital for any place she could hide.

She was fairly certain that she had lost Reed Adamson somewhere after the reckless resident followed Addison into the bathroom. Reed's excuse for the incessant pursuit of Addison was merely obeying Chief's order of staying by the principle's side. The glint in Reed's starry eyes as she spoke the words to the famous neonatal surgeon and the fact that she was still 'analyzing the character' after rehearsal hours gave Addison reason to believe that Reed was looking for an autograph rather than character help.

Not being able to find Mark was a problem, as well. Being the man of the relationship, he believed that he should be keeper of all powerful items, and that included the keys to her convertible. Addison groaned when she thought about how much easier her escape from the mouse girl would have been if she had just stood up for her rights as a woman without giving into Mark's seduction.

"Doctor Montgomery? Addison?" Reed's shrill calls were unmistakable, and to Addison's dismay, getting closer. Unsure of how much time she had left before Reed caught her, Addison hurled herself into the nearest supply closet. Groping around until her eyes got used to the darkness, Addison searched blindly for something to hold. She found just that, but she had not expected the object she grabbed onto to start speaking to her.

"Whoa there, Baby. You get enough of that at home."

"Mark?" Addison hissed, careful to keep her voice down. Mark flickered on a dim light and nodded.

"What's up?"

"I'm hiding from my understudy, which I wouldn't have had to do if someone wasn't so fixated on wearing the pants of this relationship and would have just let me handle my own keys."

"You look hotter in dresses, anyway," Mark stated dumbly, "and if you must know, or care at all, I'm in this closet for the exact same reason. That Percy guy can talk and talk, about himself, and the Seahawks, and Reed…did I mention he likes to talk about himself a lot?"

"I'm sure he's not as bad as his darling Reed. He wants her; let him have her if it means I can get rid of her. She swears she's not interested in women, but the way she follows me around, you'd think she could be a great match for Callie."

Mark stroked Addison's long red locks as they slumped to the floor of the closet together. "This is ridiculous. It's almost Christmas Eve, and we're stuck camping out here for the night," Addison whined. "And everyone from the practice is probably enjoying themselves…"

"They're a miserable bunch nowadays anyway. At least we're here together, we're happy, and we have some alone time," Mark stated, his voice growing huskier with each pro to the situation they were in. Addison blinked at him in stun as he waggled his eyebrows.

"We're not fifteen year olds, Mark. I think we're above having sex in a closet."

Mark outstretched his arms and forced Addison to follow his gaze around the closet. "Does it look like we're going anywhere else? C'mon, it's Christmas, and I've been a really good boy this year..."

Addison's top was half off and Mark's zipper undone within seconds, in the same time it took George O'Malley to pick the exact same closet to escape from his overbearing understudy in.

Embarrassment radiating off the walls of the closet, George began to excuse himself when out in the distance, Jackson was calling his name. Finding a new closet was too close of a call.

"I'm so sorry," George apologized as he darted inside and Addison and Mark fumbled to redress themselves. "It's not that great hanging around with Jackson all day…he's kind of better than me at everything, and it's not so super for the self-esteem issues I have."

Mark and Addison nodded in agreement. "That's why…that's why we're in here too. Those Mercy Westers are insane," Mark explained, cockiness notably absent in his features. George laughed nervously.

"Well, at least irony brought us all together, right?"

"Almost all of us," Mark corrected. "Little Grey is absent.."

"You _have _to bring her up," Addison huffed, causing Mark to roll his eyes and George's stomach to flutter. He could have sworn he had seen the same chemistry between Lexie and Mark that Addison had misconstrued the day of the guitar incident. Mark's look of denial gave George hope.

"You don't have feelings for Lexie?"

"See, Mark? I'm not the only one who saw it! George did too!"

"Addison…"

Before Mark could answer, in tumbled Lexie Grey, the topic of controversy herself, panting and gasping for air. The girl was, needless to say, shocked when she spotted all three of her co-stars with understudies hiding out in the same closet she chose to seek refuge in. This particular closet had been her sanctuary for years, mainly because it was so far away from hospital life.

"What are you all doing here?" Lexie asked.

"We wanted to spend Christmas Eve in a closet…why do you think we're here? Chances are we all have the same reason as you," Addison snapped. Mark massaged his fiancé's tense shoulders and warned her to shush while Lexie tucked a strand of loose hair back into her ponytail.

"Your understudy?" the intern asked, receiving three bobbing heads for a response. "Ugh! April is beyond annoying! She won't leave me alone, and when I ask her to scoot nicely, she takes everything offensively, as if I'm asking her to get out just to victimize her. So she makes me feel like crap…"

"We're the leads," George remarked. "We shouldn't have to put up with this, especially with the intensity of this year's musical being so much higher than last year. It's not fair that we need the added stress of teaching our understudies everything, when they should have been paying attention in the first place instead of sitting in their little cult all of the time."

Lexie nodded in agreement. "Maybe we should tell the Chief about what's going on."

Mark snorted. "It's the day before final dress, I highly doubt the Chief is going to want to hear about our shadowing woes when he's got a million other things on his mind."

"But what are we going to do about this, Mark?" Lexie asked, finishing her question with a dallop of distress, waiting for Mark to be her knight in shining armor.

"Yeah, what are we going to do?" Addison asked from Mark's lap. Mark was stunned when all eyes were on him.

"Well, I don't know. George probably has better ideas than I do! Right, George? George?"

George shook his head, no longer listening to the conversation and immersed in a world of fear. "What if we can't escape from this closet, and the Mercy Westers don't stop looking for us but all of our friends do, and we have to eat each other like the Donner Party people…"

"Shh!" Lexie hissed, arms suddenly around his neck and hand covering his mouth.

George looked over at Addison and Mark, who were huddled in the corner of the closet, eyes locked on the door. A small sliver of light had been poking through the crack of the doorframe, but that crack had disappeared and was replaced with four pairs of sneakers. Outside the door, four familiar voices, one shrill, one whiny, one cocky, and one rough meshed together in hushed collaboration.

"…looked everywhere for her…"

"…She's so cruel, trying to run away from me like that! The Chief's going to hear it tomorrow…"

"…he bolted when I started talking about Reed again…"

"…O'Malley wishes he was me. That's why he can't stand being near me…"

The four leads listened without breathing, praying that the Mercy West clan were only choosing the closet to talk in front of, and that they hadn't caught onto the hiding place. Somewhere in between April's sobs and Percy's tauntings, Lexie had grabbed George's hand. Her fingernails dug into his palm and his circulation was no longer reaching his hand, but George didn't mind. As long as she was with him, he felt somewhat safe.

Then Mark sneezed.

The talking outside the closet ceased. The leads hardly had time to hide, as the door swung open seconds later. There, huddled at the doorframe and squeezing any light out of the situation was Reed, April, Jackson, and Charles.

"What the…?" Charles asked first when he noted that all of the leads had picked the same hiding place.

"How did you all get in here?" April asked, tissue dabbing at her eyes.

"More importantly," Jackson quipped, as if he didn't know the answer already. "_Why _are you all in here?"

Addison sighed and was about to tell the truth when Mark, the source of all her problems that night, spoke up before her:

"If you must know, we were performing a séance in here…and you've just scared away the ghost of Christmas past. Way to go, guys."

The Mercy Westers evacuated the scene, George and Lexie noted their hand holding and awkwardly sauntered out of the closet, and Addison whacked Mark on the arm before fishing into his pants pocket and retrieving the car keys.

* * *

A/N: Hey, everyone! So, school has officially ended for me, meaning that the updates should be quicker. I hope you enjoyed this chapter, because it was a lot of fun for me to write. Please review!

-ILoVeWicked


	12. Chip on My Shoulder, Part One

**Chapter 12 – Chip On My Shoulder, Part One **

The Chief was elated when he awoke on the morning of Christmas Eve to discover that his final dress rehearsal of the show was that very day and that there was nothing stressful left to think about, thanks to Naomi. The need for coffee was mute that morning. The fact that he would be staying up well-past midnight to make the final tweeks on his musical could not even discourage him. The Chief literally skipped out of his house and past his car, frolicking eight miles to the hospital without a care in his thick skull.

When he arrived on hospital grounds, the peers among him were a mixed bag of excitement. Some, like Lexie and Sydney, were beginning vocal warm-ups with Naomi while others, like Mark and Alex, were catching up on their sleep from the night before. The crew was diligently working on the final touches to the show's technical end while several of the cast members quietly prompted their lines to each other. The Chief was shocked by the work ethic, until he came to terms with the fact that all the stars were aligning for him. No matter what troubles came his way that morning, the Chief decided that he would embrace them all with a smile.

"Attention, Ladies and Gentlemen, cast and crew, surgeons and sexologists!" the Chief began, arms outstretched and voice booming to give him a godlier appearance as he entered the room. He grinned when he had everyone's undivided attention.

"We've come this far, but we still have such a long way to go. Today is your last chance to make mistakes, your last chance to fight with someone back stage…"

Meredith and Lexie, recalling the unpleasant outcomes of each of their arguments during _Wicked_, which included shutting down the power and screaming at each other with their microphones on, simply looked at each other and then to the ground.

"Your final opportunity to pledge your love and improv beyond what the script asks of you…"

Mark and Addison simply laced hands at the Chief's comment, for had it not been for Mark's bravery and bad sense of timing in 'As Long as You're Mine', they would have not been where they were today in their relationship.

"And your last time to make any stupid blunders onstage that will require me to bring out an understudy. I think it's safe to say that you people have it under much better control this year than last year, but you know me, I just like to be safe."

"Coming from the man who strapped Erica Hahn to a mechanical bubble he bought off of eBay?" Alex asked sarcastically to anyone who cared to listen. The Chief was hearing nothing negative that morning. He simply regarded Alex's remark with a light whack to the back of the resident's head and ordered the cast take their places in one hour.

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALLYGREYS

Even though it had been less than a day after the fateful closet disaster occurred, Lexie felt as though it was ages ago since she had last seen Mark's face. Naturally first to be done applying the complex stage make-up that poor, clueless Dell was left in charge of, Lexie strategically placed her mirror so she could observe Mark.

The thick foundation on his face highlighted each crevice of his frustrated countenance as he fumbled and growled over his make-up, giving even the angriest of his expressions an angelic glow. Addison was the obligatory make-up applier to her future husband, who had never worn an ounce of make-up in his life, let alone glumpy stage make-up. Lexie's curiousity grew as Addison smeared eyeliner below Mark's eye socket with little precision, due to Mark's protests and squirming. The two broke into an argument and Addison stormed off to find Dell.

Lexie sighed and applied more blush to her bust line. Mark did not need an abusive partner like Addison when he could have his pick of the lot. What was such an independent man like him doing in a relationship that only roped him down, anyway? Once Mark finally dumped that tyrant of a fiancé and eloped with Lexie, she swore she would obey to his every whim so long as she could remain in his arms forever.

So lost in her thoughts, Lexie hardly noticed that she had drifted over to Addison's old spot, taken up the eye liner, and was staring into Mark's charcoal gray eyes, half-highlighted with smudged black lines.

Mark cleared his throat in hopes to evaporate the tension. "Can I help you, Little Grey?"

Lexie rolled the eyeliner between her thumb and forefinger and slowly rewired her brain to process Mark's confusion. "Oh! I was wondering if you needed any assistance with your eyeliner. I got done with my make-up so fast, and I noticed that you and Addison were having troubles."

Mark took in Lexie's perfectly done up face, accenting all the right features that, had he not had a fiancé, would have gotten Mark to note Lexie's beauty. Her radiating glow did not change the fact that she was a lovesick preschooler, just begging for attention. He was about to concoct a reasonable excuse to shoo Lexie away when he heard something crashing in the distance. Mark was less than shocked to find a very sleep deprived Addison knocking over the make-up cart to be the cause of the noise.

"Yeah, sure," he said finally, knowing that Addison treating him in that state would only worsen his eye condition.

Mark assured himself that Addison would never permanently be in such a position of turmoil. It was simply wedding jitters and lack of proper slumber that put her in a constant bad mood, and he wished that the wedding date were rolling around sooner. Lexie, on the other hand, seemed calm enough to handle a small amount of eyeliner application. Even though the intern was on Addison's hit list for some irrational reason, Mark figured Lexie genuinely just wanted to help out her fellow cast mate, as she would do for any of her other friends.

With a shaky hand that contradicted Mark's assumption, Lexie started drawing lines and making small talk. "So…are you excited for dress rehearsal today?"

"I guess so. How about you?"

"You bet!"

The conversation fell into a hole of silence and Lexie was left to put on the make-up and watch in pain as Mark kept stealing glances over his shoulder to make sure that Addison hadn't killed anyone. Jealousy racking her body, Lexie hoisted herself onto her knees to get closer to Mark's face, found a loophole to the conversational circumstances, and feigned shock.

"Gosh, here's the problem. You've got an eyelash in your eye, that's what's irritating you so much. Let me get it for you."

With a smile of uncertainty, Lexie pursed her lips seductively and blew into Mark's ever-so-open eyeball. He blinked a few times, rubbed his eye, and retrieved a dirty blonde eyelash on his thumb.

"Thanks, Lexie."

"No thanks, actually," a familiar voice, tinged with the spectrum of every human emotion, rang above Lexie's head. The small brunette craned her neck upward to stare into the eyes of Addison Montgomery.

"Oh, Addison, I…"

"_You _have no business here, messing around with my fiancé's eyes."

"I just…you looked like you needed help and I…"

"Stuck your nose in other people's business? Decided to continue your affair while my back was turned?" Addison barked as Dell timidly entered the scene, five different eyeliners at hand. "Mark and I have got everything under control, so I think it would be in everyone's best interest if you went along and left us alone, right, Mark?"

Mark simply looked down at his shoes through a teary eye. No, he was not at all crying over Lexie. She just blew way too hard into his eye. "Yeah, I think you should go, Lexie…"

Lexie looked from Addison to Mark, huffed, and stormed off to the nearest bathroom. Addison stared at Mark, speechless.

"What, Addison?"

Addison simply shook her head, stunned over her unbelievable stroke of bad luck. Just when she had thought she had ridden herself of getting stuck in twisted love triangles, Lexie came along with her fake blonde wig and younger body and messed everything up again.

"Did you not just inform me that you had no affectionate feelings whatsoever toward Lexie Grey?"

"I don't."

"Really? You seemed to enjoy the little blow job she just gave you."

Dell snickered at the comment, causing Mark to notice him and jab a finger in his direction. "It's _their _fault," he protested. "I have no feelings for Lexie, other than repulsion, and if your Los Angeles chums hadn't made me so relaxed with their voodoo and their fifteen coffee breaks a day, I'd still have the willpower to tell her off."

"Hey!" whined Dell. "You didn't have to fall into any of that stuff. It's not like we locked you in a cage and force fed you all of that coffee. You _like _LA, and you _like _us. Admit it, Doctor Sloan."

Mark rolled his eyes and pushed the argumentative midwife away. This conversation was not about pleasing anyone but Addison, who had given up on the debate again and merely rolled her eyes.

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALLYGREYS

_Positive!_

"Waaaaaahooooo!" the Chief cheered, all two hundred pounds of him flying into the air. Childish dreams of being a director on Broadway were resurfacing in on his stage, and the Chief was just as crazy in a state of happiness as he was in frustration. The final run through was going smoother than the pudding Naomi begged him to eat for breakfast that morning, and 'Positive' was no exception.

"That was _Wicked _awesome, you guys…pun intended!" A medley of half-hearted laughs came from the worn-out performers onstage as they made their exit. "Let's move on, shall we?"

As Meredith, Cristina, and Izzie all trudged back to the dressing room to get ready for Act Two, they found Naomi, crouched in her usual position at the piano. Meredith noted briefly that Naomi had the worse of the two directorial jobs, doing all of the work, getting less than half the credit, and always being stuck with the secondhand appreciation.

"That choreography is ridiculous," Izzie whined, breaking Meredith's train of thought. Naomi's ears perked at the mentioning of the musical and she smiled briefly at Meredith. It was easy to tell that she was slowly disintegrating, her quiet endurance becoming less and less.

"You should be grateful that _In the Heights _isn't off Broadway. That show would have been so much more work, dancing wise. Now, go get ready for Act Two, ladies! It's looking splendid."

The girls, having taken favor to the unbiased, good-natured assistant director more so than their overbearing Chief (as well as the rest of the Seattle Grace crew), skipped off with delight, as if Naomi had just ordered them the day off. The fertility specialist had a way with sweet-talking the cast, something that they were all unused to, into submission. The only person truly aware of that power was the Chief, who was growing more envious with each musical number.

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALLYGREYS

"Hey, Iz, I brought you some coffee, fresh from that awesome cappuccino machine that the Chief hides in his office," Alex greeted as he plopped beside his girlfriend. Brow furrowed and eyes locked in another dimension, Izzie nodded robotically and sipped at the smuggled cappuccino.

"What would you classify us as, Alex?" Izzie asked finally. Alex blinked at the blonde woman for a moment.

He tried to muster up a logical answer to the question without asking her to narrow in on something more specific, one that would not result in his decapitation if he responded with one shaky word. Being in a relationship with Izzie was like trying to get to the other side of a canyon with a rickety old bridge as the only way across. One false move, and it was down into the dark, jagged depths of the unknown.

"W—what do you mean by that, Honey?" Alex stated, careful down to the punctuation of the question. Izzie shrugged and pointed at Meredith and Derek.

"Mer and Der are, like, the happy couple. They're engaged. And so are Mark and Addison. Callie and that new girl are the flirty lesbians. Charlotte and Cooper are the stubborn exes. You know…they all have labels. Well, what are we, is what I'm asking you, and I want an honest answer. No crap, Alex."

"Didn't you get your labeling fix with those McNicknames? And why do you need to know this _now_, during dress rehearsal? It's just so out of the blue," Alex grunted with a sarcastic tinge that he bit his tongue for using afterward. Izzie stared at him with blank, innocent brown eyes.

"There are just so many relationships growing and breaking and straining—some for better, some for worse—during this show, especially with the Oceanside doctors mingling with us…"

"The Oceanside doctors are all mental cases, Iz," Alex pointed out.

"Well, I knew that…I just want to know where you and I stand, is all. What category do you think we fit into?"

Izzie inched closer to him, nestled her blonde locks in the space between Alex's chest and chin where her head fit so perfectly, and placed her warm palms in his clammy ones. Alex could read Izzie like a very predictable children's book at this point. He knew she must have had an answer in her mind already, and she was just waiting to see if their responses matched up.

He was saved by the 'yell' when Charlotte and Cooper erupted into another fight over Sandy that caused the Chief to halt his dress rehearsal. Alex studied the bickering couple, and in an instant, he knew that no matter how many times Cooper would screw something up or say the wrong thing, Charlotte's love for him would not change. Maybe she would say she hated him for a minute or two, but she would eventually crawl back to that general love in her heart that she kept just for his stupid mistakes. If someone as intimidating as Charlotte King could love a bonehead with as many flaws as Cooper, than Alex figured he had the right to turn Izzie around so that they were making eye contact and utter:

"We're here. We're now. I don't know if we'll be engaged next week or too obstinate to put aside our differences when we break up tomorrow, but I can tell you that right here, right now, I love you more than anything, Izzie Stevens. Someday, I'd like to label you as my everything."

Izzie's lips quivered and tears levied in her eyes as a small smile stretched out her pink lips.

"Is that from a Hallmark card?"

Alex shook his head and proudly pointed to the center of his chest, where his heart was fluttering as it took in the beauty that sat before it. "Nope. It all came from right here. Pretty poetic stuff, huh?"

Izzie laughed, her joy the light that made this musical experience worthwhile to Alex, and enveloped him in an embrace. "Thanks for being honest. Saying something like that would have killed you a few years ago. You know, all that stuff you just said gave me an idea for our label."

"What's that?" Alex asked with a smirk as he pulled away. Izzie peered over her shoulder and watched as Charlotte leaped onstage, grabbed Paulette's hairdryer, and threw it at Cooper's head. Izzie grinned.

"The only stable relationship in this production."

LEGALLYGREYSLEGALLYGREYS

"And that's act one! Way to hold that note Lexie…that was how many seconds?"

"Twenty," Lexie panted before she nearly collapsed onstage. George was quick to catch her before she fell face first. Lexie's chin was anchored to the floor in an attempt to capture more air for inhaling, her lips and tongue nearly as dry and pale as George's skin. George gaped at Lexie's exhaustion.

"Why are you so dehydrated?" George asked, not all too quietly. Naomi and the Chief were drawn to look onstage, where Lexie was borderline in need of an iron lung.

"So many scenes…too much singing…no water breaks…" Lexie answered between labored breaths. Naomi's eyes went wide and she gawked at the Chief in disbelief. The man had been given one job to do while she had worked her rear end off doing every thing else to make the production perfect down to the final bow, and that was to distribute water to the cast members and make sure that they were given water.

"Richard! I thought I instructed that you keep the actors hydrated at all times. I didn't want to wear any of them out, especially Lexie…and now look who's nearly dead on the floor!"

Chief, refusing to back down and admit he was wrong to the woman who stood just a notch below him, jutted his lower lip forward into a pout that no one could resist. "Gee, I'm so sorry, Nae Nae. I just was so excited about getting the show started that I forgot about the water bottles."

"I gave you the bottles _after _we started the show, Richard."

"Yeah, but by that point, the excitement was just flowing, and I…"

Naomi, however, would not hear it. She had done the impossible: seen past the infamous Chief of Surgery pout and all the flimsy excuses that came with it, the very trademarks that had earned him that job in the first place, and was challenging his power. She had dealt with enough of the Chief's antics. Being a well-known name on Broadway was a dream shared by Naomi as well as the Chief. At first, she had allowed the older man to boss her around and take all of the credit for her hard work because she assumed that was the way the world of show business went. It took the rude awakening of Lexie's fatigue to prove to Naomi that she needed to stand up for herself and let her decisions be known.

She turned to the cast and crew, now all gathered onstage to see what the fuss was about. "Cast, crew…how many of you are feeling thirsty right now? Don't be shy, let's see a show of honest hands."

Lexie's hand was the first to shoot up with what little energy she had left supporting it. The Oceansiders were next, for they did not know the Chief and had nothing to lose by voting against him. Tentatively, the hands of the Seattle Grace staff went up one by one until Meredith was the last one to raise her hand. The Chief was stunned by the betrayal of his pack, and had they not been his most brilliant surgeons, they would have all been out on the streets. He did not, however, let Naomi see him sweat.

Naomi's voice grew more firm as she asked another question. "And how many of you would like to take a water break now, before we begin act two?" Again, the hands shot up, and again, the Chief was beginning to wear down but stayed strong to his side.

"Naomi," the Chief began, using Naomi's full name for the first time, "it's getting late, and I think it would be best if we continued without the break and just gave out water now."

"Look at them, Richard!" Naomi protested, gesturing to the cast members behind her. "They're all already worn out, and they need a break. Think of it as intermission."

"There are no intermissions in dress rehearsal! _I'm_ the director, _I've _been busting my brains out for the past two weeks, and I say that there are no breaks!" Chief whined. Naomi's eyes glowered as she waltzed up to the Chief.

"Oh, really? _You've _been busting _you're _brains out, Doctor Webber? So it was _you _who stayed up until two in the morning every night for the past fourteen nights, perfecting blocking and learning the accompaniments to all of the songs? _You _were the one who spent a morning in the rain while _you _waited for the photo store to open, and then _you _carried three boxes of programs to your tiny car? It was _you _who went into _your _practice's wallet and got the money for the props, the sets, and the costumes? It wasn't you, was it? Oh, right! It was _me_. _I_ have been doing all of the work, and it's _my _turn to make a decision."

The speech was quiet, but it was enough to rock the already-dazed minds of the cast and crew. Percy allowed a low whistle to escape his lips after Naomi finished her well-delivered monologue. Though the Chief stood a whole head above Naomi in height, the woman was on her tippy toes, ready to pounce on the old man if needed. Without even looking back at the stunned cast, Naomi muttered, "Take five, you guys."

The Chief let out a baffled cry as the cast began to obey. One by one, he saw his pupils go against him, walk right past him, and grab a water bottle. Well, the Chief mused, those bottles might as well have been daggers. The better for his surgeons to stab him in the back with. The only people left onstage were Derek and Bailey. Naomi was suddenly sweet as honey again as she addressed the two remaining cast members.

"Derek, Miranda…don't you want a water bottle."

Derek stomped his foot assertively and crossed his arms over his chest in defiance. "I'm being a non-conformist, unlike Mister Wilder, thank you very much," Derek replied. His dry, scratchy throat made it difficult to convince even himself that he wasn't thirsty. Looking skeptically from his mentor, the Chief, to the box with three bottles of appetizing spring water left, he whispered loudly to his fiancé to grab him an extra bottle.

Miranda shrugged. "I'm going to be totally honest, I'm just staying up here so I can suck up to the Chief." Naomi rolled her eyes and grabbed another bottle. She walked up to the stage and exchanged the water with Miranda.

"Take it, just in case," Naomi instructed. As Miranda wearily scooted off stage and Naomi turned to join the happily hydrated cast and crew, the Chief erupted, allowing thoughts he had not known existed to spurt from his mouth and into Naomi's ears. Though he was aware that he had been ousted by his assistant director, he still felt the need to get the last word in and prevent himself from looking like a fool any longer.

"Now, you wait just a second, Missy! I'm the director for a reason, and that's to control people, including you! So don't you come prancing in here and trying to take my place as head honcho. We all know that's not going to happen any time soon. My surgeons ought to be well aware that they'll be left with nothing if they try to contradict my power again, and you're very lucky that you don't work here, because you would have been unemployed faster than you can say 'unemployed'."

The Chief surveyed the stunned crowd standing around him, and he realized that he truly had no good opposition for Naomi doing all of those favors. He made up the flimsiest excuse in the book and went with it, just for the sake of appearing right, if nothing else.

"Yes, I may have asked you to do me all of those favors while I sat in late and watched "Gilmore Girls" reruns, but you never had to _do _them. In fact, it was all a trick! I meant to make you feel oppressed. So ha, Nae Nae, _you _failed, not me! _You've _just been LuPoned! Take that!"

"…Wow…okay…" Pete muttered after a moment of observing the surgeons averting their eyes in embarrassment. When it came to the undeniable, secret battle going on between the cast and crew as to which medical center was represented better, Oceanside became the clear winner after the Chief's bizarre outburst.

Miranda was quick to jump on the 'Team Chief' bandwagon, for the sake of her career and to smite Naomi (and Charlotte, but no one else had to know that). "You tell her, Chief!"

Derek soon followed Miranda's suit, aiming to make Pete retract his words. "Like a _boss_, Doctor Webber!"

The Chief, humility and guilt becoming two emotions he was familiar for the first time in what seemed like forever, quietly dismissed the crew, ordered the cast to take their places, and asked them to get ready for act two.

Naomi was last to follow the group, ready to throw in the towel and just let the Chief have his way again, until she realized that the passive behavior would only bring her back to where she started. Naomi Bennett was not going to allow this virtual stranger to take advantage of her. She had already gotten enough of that in LA. Naomi whirled around, face suddenly red with rage, and marched up to the Chief, who was currently debating on whether or not grabbing a water bottle would contradict his beliefs.

"You know…I could have left the second you told us that we were not here for a consult, but for putting on a musical. I could have easily taken your stage crew away from you. But the second I saw how devoted you were to this project, and once I heard about the causes the musical was supporting, I respected you, Richard. So I convinced everyone to stay in Seattle for our holiday break, because I thought working with you would teach me a little more about how to be selfless like you. I was wrong, apparently…you're just as selfish, if not, _more _selfish than I will ever be."

"Nae Nae," the Chief cooed, placing a fatherly hand on her shoulder, "I'm so sorry for taking advantage of you…and for making you look bad back there. It's just that here in Seattle, we're big on reputations, and we have to uphold those reputations. But you can't leave, not now. It's too late and you're too great of a director to let go…"

"I accept your apology," Naomi said, shrugging Chief's hand off of her shoulder. "But I don't necessarily respect your reasoning for treating me the way you have been treating me. If you don't want me to go home and pack my bags, I'd suggest you utilize what little time this production has left to start doing some work…_then _you can take credit for it without being a slimy weasel."

"I am a slimy weasel, aren't I?" Chief stated. Naomi chuckled and shook her head.

"Yes, but you're still my friend."

"Thanks, Naomi…for everything."

"No problem. Now, get your water, Chief."

* * *

**A/N: Hey everyone! Hope summer has been treating you all nicely. I've been much busier than I expected to be this summer, so I'm sorry the update is so delayed. But still, I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Coming up next (because it couldn't fit into this chapter): George and Lexie rehearse Chip on My Shoulder...need I say more? PLEASE REVIEW!**

**-ILoVeWicked**

**A further disclaimer: I did not come up with the "LuPoned" reference...I found it online like last year...**


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